wisteria

My letters  

curl, 

my branches 

twig.  

I gel  

my hair 

until I’m beautiful  

like wisteria. 

And I entwine my body with a boy in a storeroom closet, 

creeping from his splintered hips to his red-bricked heart. 

Our secret. 

Then, with a half-mooned fold, I strike like time, 

until his cavities implode  

to rubble. 

And he drips from my fingers, like a squashed mulberry, 

to a blank page I’ve labelled 

Elegy for a boy who wasn’t as pretty as me. 

And I bury it in the damp cemetery soil, so when it rains 

maybe

it will bloom into babylonian

racemes.  

In Spring, the builders who repair All Saint’s chapel disagree, 

when I coil from the rafters, past the crucifix, slashing

the disciples’ mouths

with my leaves. 

And I hiss when the pastor reads Paul’s epistles: 

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of

God? I know because those hunky builders hooted at me 

and I’ll strangle them before they can forget 

the musk of my lavender petals. 

But my father cries when he sees me hanging 

through cracks of light in the attic ceiling. 

And that’s when wisteria is no longer pretty or powerful,

and each seed is a gay teen: 

Cody J. Barker 

Zenon Bartlett 

Justin Aaberg