appealing

The Maynard
Spring 2020

Page Hill Starzinger
0:00
 
 

Of Stinging Nettle

Faint, overripe aroma
of gardenia petals

drifting above a dark halo
of evergreen leaves up

toward olfactory chambers:
detected and diffusing

into salt, enzymes and antibodies—
a changeable flow

replacing itself
every ten minutes. I am

never what I was and
never quite what

I want to be. Sepia-grey iguana
flicks his tail

while shredding black
seed-studded papaya:

unripe, thrown in the garden.
We are done with it. Disposable—

our lives and
possessions. Bougainvillea

bought for papery blooms
is thorny with toxic

sap. Villas are fumigated—
methyl bromide, not approved

for residential use
causes seizures and worse:

two teenagers in medically
induced comas. Neurologically

it’s like being
in a torture chamber.
We

name our world
as we see it: Black Caper, Flamboyant

Catch n Keep, Christmas Bush,
yellow Sap Sucker. Or

after ourselves:
like the Scottish naturalist

Alexander Garden, who didn’t
even discover the flower.