Ode to a Bruise, by Grant Tarbard

Flower of Life II, by Georgia O’Keeffe (USA) 1925

Ode to a Bruise

Life is a fold in a flower, a shroud of animation,  
a naked pout reaching in with the colour of a womb. 

What lies in the centre? A continuance, a beginning
of an iris opening to compose a prismatic fountainhead, 

the incantation of a scarlet labium where dawn 
makes itself known, previously unpublished, blank verse, 

a bruise with its roach black engorged pigments 
offering the kernel of breath and awe. This divine lily, 

fashioned via wanderlust by the dint of a puzzle-box 
cannot be pressed in a brochure of perished reverence.

Grant Tarbard

This poem is from This is the Carousel Mother Warned You About, the poet's upcoming pamphlet from Three Drops Press.

Grant Tarbard is the author of Loneliness is the Machine that Drives the World (Platypus Press) and Rosary of Ghosts (Indigo Dreams). His new pamphlet This is the Carousel Mother Warned You About (Three Drops Press), and his new collection dog (Gatehouse Press), will be out this year.