The Passion Flower

What falls falls, / I’d like to write, in continuous swoon
—Dean Young

Oh, if I were a bee, I’d barrel right into that ecstatic petticoat, this crazy
flower that pulls out all the stops to open for just one day of glory, falling
in continuous swoon, a combustion of rapture—no wonder Catholic priests
named it after the Passion of Christ, jerry-rigged the filaments into the crown
of thorns, stepped up the stigmas to be three nails that held Jesus to the cross.
I kid you not, I first thought it was plastic, right out of the Christmas Tree Shop,
or a photoshopped pop tart, raucous as a girl’s pink and purple Disney Princess
Plastic Strap Watch, or a hand-painted Fabergé brooch, this psychedelic face
poking out at me from a vine wrapping a pole on a cemetery path, five green
anthers like turbines on a small plane, mounted with three purple stigmas
about to take flight from a yellow and purple launch pad, ringed with periwinkle
filaments, a confection worthy of Escoffier. Who would go for this today—
wait, I take that back, we’re more than ever ready to validate and vindicate,
tiki torch and excoriate, lie to make a man a king, a god, a syndicate.

Image: Passion Flower by Ted, licensed under CC 2.0.

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Wendy Drexler

Wendy Drexler is a recipient of a 2022 artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her fourth collection, Notes from the Column of Memory, was published in September 2022 by Terrapin Books. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Barrow Street, J Journal, Lily Poetry Review, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, Solstice, The Atlanta Review, The Mid-American Review, The Sun, and The Threepenny Review, among others. She was the poet in residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, MA, from 2018 to 2023 and served as programming co-chair for the New England Poetry Club from 2016-2024.

Latest posts by Wendy Drexler (see all)

• Reconstructed Sapphic Fragment #145 and Erasure of Reconstructed Sapphic Fragment #145 - August 23, 2024
• The Passion Flower - April 11, 2023
• Types of Animals - November 19, 2020