Morbid Florilegia (Part I), and: Morbid Florilegia (Part II)
- Morbid Florilegia (Part I), and: Morbid Florilegia (Part II)
Morbid Florilegia (Part I)
The flourish, the fanfare, the febrifugic feverfew.
An oleaginous emplastrum—with horehound leaf,olive over olive, the oily parts, the dry.
An antidote for the unblessed, the blistering,the dourly flowering flora, the corpse flora.
Greek turned Latin turned inordinatelyangled and filed.
Plants reduced to the idea of plants reduced to woodcuts(circa 16th century) reduced to Victorian floor tile.
Travel by river snail, by liver of mad dog.By God Greek Juniper! By monoxide of lead.
Travel under government of the moonwith arrach wild and stinking.
Flower and seed through August from June.The butcher, the barber, the oil-boiling cauterizer.
The vegetal assiduousness, the pennywort diligence. [End Page 26]
Morbid Florilegia (Part II)
1st: Confirmthe morphological integrity of the garden body.Safe-vouched, the plant-pressed organ herbariumunshelved (forget the blood and hairy root saw,the skin under its nails garden claw—weasellywith fingers crossed imputes defense wounds).
2nd: Forgetthe church fathers, the philosophers,the appropriate and inappropriate authorities.Forget the know-it-all anthologists,the squirrellers of curios and collectibles.
3rd: Fieldthe spiral-rung, the stitched, the strung,the Cirlox-spined, the glue-gunned,the Duo-Tanged (le cerveau bilingue),the never perfect perfect-bind,the Peterson-worthy field guide. [End Page 27]
Sylvia Legris's most recent poetry collection is The Hideous Hidden (New Directions, 2016). Her third book, Nerve Squall, won the 2006 Griffin Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, Poetry, and Conjunctions. The poems published here are from a manuscript titled Garden Physic.
