Countdown to Plants and Planets
Gerard’s herball says why look up at the
sky when all around your feet are these green
beings ready to be seen?
Atria are receiving rooms of heart’s blood–
Where are the hearts of plants and planets?
A core to where each stem’s blood leads?
The flow of would-be water or gaseous
striped storms? Up there on the horizon
Ursa Major on the rim of Manhattan
Lumbers over the edge of night —
The next planet over says hello
It’s a mystery we can’t hear unless
We hold our ears close to shells — plants
Awake & go to sleep at the same time or never
Genderkind
(I dressed you up in yellow)
The day after you were born
I wrapped you in yellow
A hand knit scarf
Swaddled in yellow
To confound the question
Boy or girl as the first and foremost
It was cold December
Your grandfather brought
Me a handmade drive-by omelet
Yellow with butter
And red wine to fortify
All the blood I had lost
Cross Creek appeared
on the hospital movie channel
/
Wrapped in yellow scarf
You saw the world for the first
Time — it was 12th Street
/
Today you say again
You must turn from “girl”
And how “cute” is “insult”
/
Reassignment of lay lines singing
Trace and redraw their power
Within a gender expansive hour
/
Back a few years ago in Carolina
Dot gave her red-haired nephew
Now niece a purse for Christmas
Who the world thought was he
Was really she and that was her
Way of saying I accept you I love you
In the caroling poems of our minds
Let’s decide once and for all to be
Kind
Up close with the delicate feminine cat sitting on the chest
Up close with the delicate feminine cat sitting on the chest
I explore the pale perfect caves of her ears as I did when a girl
Her intricate fur multi-colored each leg uniquely marked
One tabbyish one orange calico and ringed
Hawks circle above the house but oh how she loves to be outside
Now she on my foot on the day porch bed – she knows where I am
As if to keep track of the one who took her in
Who feeds her and cleans her box
Soon my kid will leave our home like a cat let outside
Dangers and adventures stresses and pleasures
Boredom and accountables beings and eatings
All have to happen not on my watch
To open the door to that life curing
Existing in relation near and far
From the ones we relate to
Connection elemental
Let it develop
Its green leafy extravagance
Like the garden I return too
After a few weeks away
Exploding with fruiting bodies
Alive in green
Tunnels of green
Eating the green
Doing my work
Living my life
Intertwined up
Matrix of
Living letters
The Secret Garden
Planet Sedna is coming closer
but won’t be as near as Planet Claire
Venus is in my spare room
and Mars is a red small eye
up on Blueberry Hill
The Hamptons bring out the Whitman in me
While under the bed lives Edward Gorey’s Schrödinger’s lost long cat
Winghaven is totally birdful of baths
and here we sit at your mother’s table
now yours in Noland land
aka here in There-i-ca
the use of vertical space is a trade secret
the use of vertical space is a trade secret
of our love / when in doubt just go up
the honeysuckle mountain ascends itself
at last like the cold mountain twins yet warm
here we are in parallel space listening in
on nuthatch array and a finch on the window
raggedy ann sleeps in my baby cradle
given me by my mom who is excited
to show me life and give me access
to taut reality on the line
we are storm couplets born
up the mountain spiral swarm
guzzling up all the fairy juices
served us in Cashville on the rise
I got a poetry book in the mailbox
almost surrounded by knotweed
our lush treehouse bear cave treasure
might be soon a place for leisure
if only I can take my own advice
and come round now to finish thrice
I’ll be named double southern
Lee Ann Brown — then form a coven
After Miguel James’
Mi novia Ítala come flores
My newbie beastie comes in flowers everywhere
Mi esposa appears like a temblor in the library
My paper street monster is alone and with whores
My god’s gift to womankind speaks in stones and conch shells
He is a grabful antiquity of destitute hats
My growing novia goes to the sun and back while smoking blue paregoric Gitanes
When someone spread an elaborate rumor about me, my amarado came to my aid in their own salty way
My girlfriend left a Boris Karloff van in the bathtub and is god’s body of oil and nothing
I, me, am enamored, I mean completely besmirched with my newlywed
His / her skin is like auto cinema
My novia holds me and rubs his ugly son against my face
Living with my novia in the city of needles is a lot like horses
My novel love wears a passim shawl of colonial ficus and innervated herbs energized with dove-like flowers
I walk to my love and my love gives me money
I levitate mandarins into the sky above our cages
Sharing drawings of monstrous nudes of old burros
I become my novia and he becomes me
We become fabulous for one another on the balcony
Boog published one of LEE ANN BROWN’s (https://leeannbrownpoet.com/) first chapbooks a museme in the summer of 1993, and, in 2000, a broadside calendar of her poem “Cento Century” and The Portable Boog Reader, where she was the featured poet and which had a photograph of her by Allen Ginsberg on its cover. Brown is the author of five published books of poetry, several collaborative books and projects, and is n the middle of at least five others. She was the Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at the University of Cambridge 2017-2018 and teaches poetry at St John’s University in NYC. She performs her poetry, curates and hosts various poetry happenings including Tender Parlor at Torn Page, and is the founding editrix of Tender Buttons Press, which recently received the Lord Nose Award.