Blood Poppy

She slices me with her paper wings.

It’s deafening, her piercing the virgin green

popping azure skies with her incarnadine.

She’s Pluto’s puppet, I am sure,

Proserpina’s pomegranate 

bleeding through the grass

pleading with me, a sea skimmer, 

a skipping stone tempted by the wine-dark;

the slope to the abyss curls and unfurls,

a dying fiddlehead inviting us to slide, 

to drip with Dali’s clock into the dark.

Pricked, I follow her figure with my eyes,

roots melded to the underworld,

slender body bending with supple grass,

finale of carbuncle. I fear 

a piece of red glass plummeting

unnoticed, a speck of dust to Neptune,

polished to pitch dark death.

Stay above ground! she screams in silence,

stares me down with her charcoal chasm.

We are atop this color wheel of Fortune now!

First published in Third Wednesday.  Fall 2012, Vol. 4, Issue 4. Print.