from VIOLET SPEECH
Tim Peterson (Trace)
The violets in the mixed perennial border, plump, with lacy edges, come in a variety of
purples. The violets providing orally answered please rise please stand. The undertenant
of said premises, stem to petiole to leaf, voiced several stipulations drooping after rain,
sweet craolo vortex stain.
A deposition: how do you answer the stigma style petal ovary?
I speak an unlisted option, anther sepal. An argument ensues and I’m insisting, now
shouting at the clerk behind the desk. Like a buzzing bee he gathers drones, hardons. I
am his receptacle, discretion.
Perennial violets spread by creeping roots and rhizomes, duly sworn before a plaque
that reads “In God We Trust.” The entire garden bed, a court, a caption for that plaque
we saw behind the violet’s head, low-slung ceilings miracle-gro, cheap nametag font
cotyledens.
~
Stigma style petal ovary
How we approach the bench, bed
Violets caption hammered
Armies
Font cotyledons flash please rise
we avoided, marred gathers drones
self-pollinated, donning a not
a meadow discontinuance open
need this threatened bractaeoles
donning a swarming
~
TAKE NOTICE, the court has decided:
Violet speech is harmful.
Violet speech cannot be legislated.
The violet we’d want eluded its propositioner’s desires, this field too dark fuschia, this
malevolent light purple body too foregoing to surrender up sun rays. Armies recline on
armoirs, illuminated by the occasional flash of violet color. Gray resentful faces walk
among violets marred by an amendent by the claimant.
Words hammered at the dais around which violets gathered, clamoring for restrictions
on our need to legislate the fact that we were violets were conscious of what was said
about us, how we avoided becoming a plot that could be quantified, surrounded, dug up.
~~~~~
Tim Peterson (Trace) is the author of SINCE I MOVED IN, which received the Gil Ott Award from Chax Press. The chapbook VIOLET SPEECH is forthcoming from 2nd Avenue Poetry. Other recent work has appeared in Cue, Aufgabe, and Sonora Review. Peterson edits EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts and curates the TENDENCIES: Poetics and Practice talks series at CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.