Another poem inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe. I couldn't find in the gallery anything with nightshade or Belladonna, but it is one plant that I've always been fascinated by. It is a whole species of plant and the tomato, potato, tomatillo, eggplant, and so many others are a part of. Belladonna and most night shade are extremely poisonous and yet they have so many medicinal properties to heal illnesses.
The Solanaceae
How would Georgia paint sickness and death?
Would she paint it into her red bluffs creasing?
folding into wrinkles of dark and light?
Or would it be the nightshade flower
on a canvas the size of a wall?
The linen becomes the purple night,
a mouth, an abyss where shade lives.
A flower has no teeth, it does not need them
to bite or latch on like a leech,
its trumpet a carnivorous stomach
all it needs is darkness, the need for flesh,
to feed on our hours, our minutes,
its stamen like a torch to light us afire
or when we are weak enough
to move in for the kill, a knife
made of pollen and sunlight.
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