print previewback DEVON WALKER-FIGUEROA
Horticulture or Eternity
for Vladimir Nabokov & Dorianne Laux
We say we are done
with cults & throat swabs, but also ourselves
& the summer days that were never
so numbered as they led us
to believe. Some leaves are the shade
our flesh is on the inside, taking
on our temperature to tempt
a fly to fetid surfaces that force it
into service of self-
pollination. Other
leaves are said to possess
teeth, spines, lobes, fur. Forgive them for
they know not what. We’ve done
this dance before. This numinous
dance has done us in & all the in-
florescences in the Garden of What’s Needed
know it. Verily we suspect
no one is spared from becoming
numbed, becoming named,
however accidentally, after plants that prefer
secrecy to sunlight. We are, perhaps,
a touch like the famed corpse
flower these humid days—a little fishy, a lot
finished—holding
in our flesh
a fragrance that waits for us
to be sad and done. 
The Blood’s Unwritable Psalm 
Gallowed Be
Of Gut & Gold
Horticulture or Eternity
The Hunted
Paradise Lust
Philomath