Welcome to the Fall

Abstract

Welcome to the Fall Flower Conroy (bio) There are things I still cannot tell you—murmuring I’m not the one who’s so far away, another touches me in my dreams & I awake bereft, sweat along my neck. Or your threadbare shirt ghosts my skin—article Against clavicle—like baby’s breath among the tiger Lilies—as I stir yesterday’s coffee with a knife. No spoon To be found. Do you believe in god? I rubbed the belladonna’s Psychotropic dust into my eyes, unbeknownst, Trimming the hedges last Thursday. Headache struck me & I thought it was the light. Dizziness. Blurred vision. One pin Prick, one gaping pupil. Trees scurrying. I washed A valium down with Benadryl, flushed my eyes with cool water. God’s end in godsend. You can tell a snake by its shed skin. I meant to be rawer. The honey in the mystery. In the breathing room—whatever god believes in I believe In that—you circle, your shadow sweeps over me. This also was What I wanted wasn’t it? Facedown & dumbfounded, the yellow blooms stare at their thin Reflection in the glass tabletop as if they were frozen in avalanche. [End Page 119] Flower Conroy Flower Conroy is the author of three chapbooks: Facts about Snakes & Hearts, winner of the Heavy Feather Review Chapbook Contest; The Awful Suicidal Swans; and Escape to Nowhere. She is the winner of Radar Poetry’s first annual Coniston Prize and the Tennessee Williams Exhibit Poetry Contest as well as a scholarship recipient of Bread Loaf, Squaw Valley, Napa Valley, and the Key West Literary Seminar. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in American Literary Review, Gargoyle, and others. Copyright © 2017 University of Nebraska Press