Magnolia, Exposed.

It looks like I will have time to write you a poem after all. To be honest, I should have been working on my senior thesis this afternoon, but who am I to tell the muse to wait? The following poem is actually guided in part by an assignment for class, for which we are supposed to write "a dream or a lie." I'm not sure exactly which this one is, but it is most definitely not your usual springtime poem. It's my attempt to make some metaphorical leaps in subject matter. I hope you enjoy.

P.S. For those of you who think poetry is all spontaneous--you have no idea how many hours it took me to research tree types before I was finally able to identify the tree outside my window as a magnolia. Art is work.

Suicide

I make my wrist a convent.
Veins are dark halls full
of skinny sisters, draped in
blue under a sheen of silent
skin. They turn their faces,
which are saucers or
blossoms, peep their tongues
from between hard lips
to catch the season melting.
Do not let the abbess know
the magnolia in the courtyard.
The knife, when it stings
and nips through air,
I peel away the walls to
expose magnolia. My little
sisters are braver and braver
with their hands unrolling,
heads tilted back, eyes fluttered
and closed; each discovers
the more she opens her mouth,
the more tongues she has,
nestled around saintly organs.
They hush each other, rush out
before the abbess knows. God is
a boy with sky for a long, arched
body who must beg to touch
the magnolia tree--they open
the doors to him, they let him
in. The abbess knows
and, to put it delicately, she
will not try to stop them.