I will make something of you both pigment
and insecticide. Something natural,
even red, like serviceberries.
Which a cloister of young Benedictine
nuns, in exile and drought,
found and brilliantly crushed
into a blessed moxie wine.
With terrible pride, with gloxinia,
the slipper-shaped flower, served
it bitter and staining in the chalice.
By evening chapel, habits thrown up
and still, their insides found all blue,
as suspected, I am cold now and I cannot
paint or move you.
Still Life, With Gloxinia
Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of Sensorium Ex: An Opera in Verse. She is a professor of English and creative writing at Rutgers University–Newark.
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