Carolyn Oliver

And the world’s the same, less
a few smashed tulips.
The melting comes before
the hyacinths I cut yesterday
bell open.
The fleshiness of the flowers!
As if they relish the end
the stems spike each jar
with crystal fur, the petals
striped thick with pink
invite a testing touch, and—
every show has its price—
a knife made of scent finds
my head, my eyes, and grows.
I took them
because I was afraid. I took them
from the early tending bees,
I took them from their rooted
bulbs fat with spring rain like
wound-fed maggots, I took
them from you, spared you
their sharp sweetness and even
if I love you my whole life
I’ll understand if you can’t
forgive me.

Carolyn Oliver

’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, Indiana Review, Cincinnati Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Shenandoah, 32 Poems, Sixth Finch, Southern Indiana Review, Sugar House Review, FIELD, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the Goldstein Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review, the Writer’s Block Prize in Poetry, and the Frank O’Hara Prize from The Worcester Review, where she now serves as a poetry editor. Carolyn lives in Massachusetts with her family. Learn more at carolynoliver.net.

ART: Natural Selection by Kathy Bruce

Kathy Bruce is an environmental sculptor and collage artist whose work explores human forms within the context of poetry, literature and the natural environment. She received an M.F.A from Yale University School of Art and a certificate from The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Ms. Bruce is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including a Fulbright Hayes Senior Scholarship Grant for Lecturing and Research in Puno Peru 2012 and 1983, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship. She has exhibited her work in the US, and internationally including the UK, Senegal, Taiwan, France, Denmark, Peru and Canada.