Again, the Magnolias
BY LISA HITON
open in the tree outside the window
though its branches hug the building so
intently they seem part of it.
They stun me with their magenta
interiors, their rotting funk
when the white tips brown and wilt.
Years before, I’d gawk upwards
from Comm Ave on my way to Boylston,
to my post at the last stretch of marathon.
Now, I’ve known them from the high windows
where I was derelict in your arms.
In the bowels of Virginia, these trees
burst into pinker flowers. The odor
is the same in these realities
as in the double-wombed memory
of this time, which stands still,
though I age. At eye level, I can see
the wingless beetles who pollinate them,
a tree that bloomed before bees arrived.
Queers can’t be traditional pollinators
either. Landraced, grown from selected
seeds. All of these thoughts befell me before,
when all I wanted to erect was the dead,
when what was ahead would live
long enough to live long enough.
Again, the magnolias are open.
All I can think of these days is who
I will be taken from.
The beetle moves blossom by blossom,
never choosing which to condemn.
Future Tense
BY LISA HITON
Canned goods come out of the bag.
I stack them in someone else’s pantry,
each one a lie I’ve held to: the time
Brittany cut off my ponytail (that was
an obvious one) at the back of my mother’s salon.
Or in fourth grade when I let other children
give me too much attention for a bruise.
The Pound Puppy I grew attached to
in the children’s play area at Pasquesi’s—
I tried to take it home with me, but
my mother saw (she made me give it back).
The girl I loved. The only one. I didn’t tell
her, and that turned out to be a lie, too.
A timed-writing, a long affair, a resume.
It’s simple, really. In the first week,
they will become humble pairings, garbanzo
beans in a salad, or olives for tapenade.
As things run low, they’ll turn into more
complicated matters: to eviscerate the taste
of tin, the chilis will get blasted in lemon,
thrust into the blades for pesto. It will take
balsamic to change sardines and white beans
into something of a fisherman’s lunch.
They all feed me: the ponytail, the animal,
the bruises, the stolen lines, the women
who loathe me—I don’t blame them. I will feed
myself into a future, short as it may be.
