O, to live in a greenhouse palace, a conservatory, stone walls broken with glass—massive multi-paned windows, ceiling dome open to dewy zephyrs—surrounded by conifers, mosses, ferns, angiosperms. To wear a snug gown, a wavy, voluminous train of sweet alyssum. Wallow in sun, humidity, petrichor of soil and flora, cycles of growth and collapse. Devour the aromas: Asiatic lily, lilac, iris, wisteria, freesia. Bees buzz in and out of your tiny white blossoms. Black rose-finches tuck nests in your leaf folds, spiral around you, perch on your crown.
O, to be hybrid—
half-human, half-plant, rooted,
shifting with the light.
KAREN GEORGE is author of three poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), and Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021). She won Slippery Elm’s 2022 Poetry Contest, and her short story collection, How We Fracture, which won the Rosemary Daniell Fiction Prize, is forthcoming from Minerva Rising Press in Spring 2023. Her work appears in Adirondack Review, Atticus Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Indianapolis Review, Poet Lore and I-70 Review.
HOWIE GOOD‘s handmade collages have appeared or are forthcoming in Blue as Orange, Scapegoat, and other online publications, including MAYDAY. The collages are intended as a rebuke to the lifeless perfection of photoshopped images. They are also intended to provoke an authentic response by combining images in a way that challenges old habits of seeing.