Poetry

Pollen Fever

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     *

 

Contrary to what they believed, I was never allergic to skin. Or sunrays. I wasn’t a cadre.

 

     * *

 

Arrested by three. Tortured by five. Fornication. For negligence. For negation. Wasn’t that a question about a syzygy? Or posture? He even pawned his pearls to pose with my wax figure. I sneezed profusely in their hands.

 

     * * *

 

First they spoke a language that embraced you like a failed state. Then they switched. Like a passage from winter to summer, the transition was ungovernable, and violent.

 

     * * * *

 

Damn you all! Indecent infixes, triple consonants and doted vowels!

 

Like Mi Aye, I’ve had it twice.

Once for being too yellow.

Once for being too white.

 

     * * * * *

 

Even after they’d renamed pollen fever hay, I insisted watchful trees mustn’t bloom. Rain may settle dust, but leave us with wet pyres. For padauk, however, drizzle is never enough. 

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