Julie Kane.
“Spider Lilies.”
© Julie Kane.
Used by permission.
All rights reserved.
(ALSO CALLED “NAKED LADIES” IN NORTH
LOUISIANA, BECAUSE THEY PRODUCE NO
LEAVES UNTIL AFTER THEIR FLOWERS HAVE
BLOOMED AND WITHERED.)
|
After the first rain
in October, they spring up
in straight rows around
houses and grave plots;
something in their DNA
craves a human-drawn
line to follow, like
grade-school children writing their
names on a ruled page.
Photo by Louisiana Gardener
|
Up close, too, they look
more like kids’ toys than like real
flowers: red plastic
pinwheels fastened to
green wooden sticks, with not one
wan leaf among them;
Photo by Louisiana Gardener
|
and in their centers,
where you’d expect to find sex-
ual organs and
sticky gold pollen,
is only nothingness, like
the crotch of a doll.
Yet when I go to
the poor Creole church at Isle
Brevelle this time of
autumn for their fair,
it’s not the store-bought aster
nor the rich man’s rose
that I find tucked in
the plaster folds of Mary’s
dress with a child’s hope.
Notes
- Creole church at Isle Breville. Saint Augustine Catholic Church at Melrose in Natchitoches Parish, LA.
Source
Kane, Julie. Rhythm & Booze: Poems by Julie Kane. Urbana: University of Illinois Pr., 2003. <http:// www. amazon. com/ Rhythm- Booze- National- Poetry- Series/dp/ 0252071409/>. © Julie Kane. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Selected books by Julie Kane:
Body and Soul (1987)
Rhythm & Booze: Poems by Julie Kane(2003)
Winner in the 2002 National Poetry Series
Finalist for the 2005 Poet's Prize
Jazz Funeral (2009)
Winner of the 2009 Donald Justice Poetry Prize