March 2024
Shelly J. Norris
sjndestiny@yahoo.com
sjndestiny@yahoo.com
Bio Note: I am officially semi-retired now, teaching online only, and working my way back to Wyoming. My first collection of poems titled Hyperbola is set to debut February 2024 from Impspired Press. Several poems in that collection first appeared here on Verse Virtual. I am currently organizing a few other manuscripts. It's finally time.
Complicit
Wild & Moonseed Fox grapes, True & False Morels black & deadly nightshades, wild carrot & hemlock: Be not fooled. All things are not what they seem, some poisonous doppelgängers of what we crave. I watched how passionately you wished me to be Marigold. I never deceived you, never pretended to be Calendula. Shallow rooted as I am, you left me among the little volunteer calendars to flower & seed to dry stalk & terminal spikes. Had you pulled my tender green early, I could not whisper across the lawn these five thousand ragweed promises. You ignored the fine cilia, the subtle distinctions, wanted to believe I would bloom into something I am not.
Please Dispose of the Dead Gray Squirrel Beneath the Mimosa
We are contacting you because you paused to gaze upon hummingbirds hovering, imposed your stare into their private ventures of flicking forked tongues between perennial petals. Please do not reply to this message. You are receiving this message to caution you against allowing momentum to lapse while collapsed abed beneath blanket shields recovering from symptoms of a malady whose root cause remains mystery. Deal with it. Please add us to your address book. You are receiving this message because you once subscribed to a cultic faith that suffocated your spirit in the baptismal, and because a hair of doubt delivered you weak, watered down, a mere gauze impression of might have could. There’ll be a movie about it. We are contacting you because we believe travel should be more than cafes, traffic noise, famous portraits, shifts of venue and foreign cats. Passport renewal is taking four times longer than usual. Please allow adequate time for processing. Thank you for joining on impulse. We are reaching out to remind you of the mail order guitar you pedaled miles of country road selling seeds to order. Whatever happened to that instrument of angels you didn’t have nerve to strum? This will be our last contact. Click here to unsubscribe.
©2024 Shelly J. Norris
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL