{"id":3838,"date":"2018-10-14T20:56:47","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T03:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/?p=3838"},"modified":"2026-03-17T10:34:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T17:34:15","slug":"gladiola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/gladiola\/","title":{"rendered":"Gladiola"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trigger warning: this poem is about a nefarious \u00a0practice mentioned at its end\u00a0 <\/span>…<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/i><\/p>\n

It took years. I could reach the third crotch
\nof the willow, pick off a catalpa pod
\nonce shinnied up after. Now stranger
\n<\/span>in a familiar but shrunken backyard\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I sized up the limber sycamore.
\nMight I still clamber up its reaches?
\n<\/span>I sniffed sweet gardenia, bruising
\n<\/span>its silken petals brown with soft touches.<\/p>\n

But where were the sleepy plants sweaty boys
\nwith grass itch tease to make play possum,
\ntheir lobes curling up like doodlebugs
\n<\/span>beside a yellow-magenta blossom?<\/p>\n

The new tenants must hate the burgeoning
\n<\/span>stuff of imagination. They weed, prune,
\n<\/span>lead staid community crusades against
\nanything that might make us swoon.<\/p>\n

They spread acrid toxic herbicides
\non any wild seed which takes root and sprouts,
\nlike nettles or spear grass (once tortures\u00a0for
\n<\/span>captive braves whose home-made breechclouts<\/p>\n

flapped in the breeze, baring boyish hips).
\n<\/span>These good burghers drain the ditches where kids
\n<\/span>with bacon tied on strings coax crawdads out
\n<\/span>the lips of underwater mud-clump mounds.<\/p>\n

Metamorphosis from tadpole to frog
\n<\/span>has been reduced to glossy Life<\/i> illustration,
\nthe cool, real writhing of snakes replaced
\nwith clammy joke-shop rubber stand-in.<\/p>\n

So storms won\u2019t sweep small boys out smelly
\n<\/span>bayous, flush them up sticky in Galveston Bay,
\n<\/span>these burghers put grates in front of culverts,
\npour concrete on every unkempt gully.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet the sycamore was my private
\nredoubt for illicit excursion,
\n<\/span>when lush with concealing vegetation,
\n<\/span>a site of surreptious masturbation.<\/p>\n

I clomb it gingerly that muggy morn
\nnot bothering if I should or not.
\n<\/span>Then, transgressing all their civic rules,
\nI did it swaying with my frailer barefoot\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

self whose haunts and hideways I glimpsed
\nthrough foliage below. My sperm splattered
\n<\/span>onto twigs and leaves high above where
\n<\/span>first I saw it. Nothing else mattered.<\/p>\n

I had names for all the nooks and niches
\nin that Eden, even the unsheathed bulbs
\nsprouting in cat shit beside elephant-ear
\nin beds outside my window, my ersatz vulva.<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

… onanism<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trigger warning: this poem is about a nefarious \u00a0practice mentioned at its end\u00a0 … * It took years. I could reach the third crotch of the willow, pick off a catalpa pod once shinnied up after. Now stranger in a familiar but shrunken backyard\u00a0 I sized up the limber sycamore. Might I still clamber up … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Gladiola”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[25,9,8,80],"class_list":["post-3838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-erotic-poetry","tag-houston","tag-memories","tag-trees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3838"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3841,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3838\/revisions\/3841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}