Look at the Orchid

Look at the orchid, closely.
Behold its obscene openings: five veined, spread-winged petals,
folding outwards innermost (do I need to name the parts?): All bedazzle, all display.

Its dark-green silken necks
do not snap unless you bend them hard, hold out promiscuous fruit,
naked and disgraced when flowers fall, until bedecked again with tight, brown nuts.

Not even its leaves are leaves as such:
succulent affairs, perked like a fat hare’s ears, aglow in the slanting sun,
perched on spindly spider legs that dangle down the pot the goddess sits in, smug.

Modesty is for beginners.
Look at the orchid: She knows what it takes to be alive.

“Look at the Orchid” appeared in the second issue of the
Nothing Substantial Literary Magazine in 2019.