A Rose Dipped in Gold
Because he knows cut flowers make me sad—
watching the bruised petals swoon
gauging when to toss out the bouquet,
not so soon its beauty is wasted,
not so late it’s a pathetic
litter of pollen and pistils–
he bears me home one white rose
dipped in gold
caught at full ripeness,
a bud just gasping open, each soft curve
edged in gilt, the whole of it frozen
In sparkly polymer. Worse somehow
for being white as a first communion dress,
or a pope encased in his glass coffin.
I turn its hardness in my hand
and see a loved celebrity’s
changed face, features
newly strange. For its offenses
the skin pinned back
uncanny, smooth, and nearly blank
as a badly erased page.
*
April Lindner is the author of two books of poetry, Skin, which received the Walt McDonald First Book Prize from Texas Tech University Press, and This Bed Our Bodies Shaped (published by Able Muse Press). She has edited and co-edited a number of anthologies, including Contemporary Catholic Poetry (with Ryan Wilson) and Contemporary American Poetry with R. S. Gwynn. She has written three Young Adult novels, all published by Poppy. A professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University, she lives in Stockton, New Jersey.
