Nth-floor Waiting Room, Unattended
Joseph Tate
As, who, she asks, gave flowers—sea thrift, smooth aster, —
home on greening and gravel-ballast roofs
below,
the intake form mirrors
into a closed field, fissured sheets of glassed snow,
monochrome Sonnenblumen (sunflower, tall sister to aster,)
stand colding in the mar of dark furrows,
bracts and rays cindered—pseudanthium,—“false flower.” Not ruse,
but abundance. In truth,
over-full of flowers, flower on flower, she says, over-
flowing, & Last name, first. Unhurried, she rises and steps
as it were a place meadowed not by oath,
nor Asklepian rod and twined serpent, but, as it is,
by ones who open and call to us.
Joseph Tate is a writer based in Seattle. His poems have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Dadakuku, E·ratio, Measure, Yemassee, and other publications. He’s also published and lectured on prosody, Renaissance literature, and Radiohead.