Dandelion Is
not only the buttery froth of bloom,
strut and defiance and sex, pulse,
sap, heads one morning in the grass,
eager little sun-warm erections,
nor yet the gray spiritual
fluff clocks, sketching their skeletal
longing away from the earth,
that shiver toward the wind and go,
but the downward clot of root,
unkillable, fibrous, that sucks wet
from the dirt, breaks upward,
digs in like teeth and chews the stone.
—by James Owens
Bio: Two books of James Owens's poems have been published: An Hour is the Doorway (Black Lawrence Press) and Frost Lights a Thin Flame (Mayapple Press). His poems, stories, translations, and photographs appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Superstition Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Cresset, Poetry Ireland Review, and The Stinging Fly. He lives in Wabash, Ind.
not only the buttery froth of bloom,
strut and defiance and sex, pulse,
sap, heads one morning in the grass,
eager little sun-warm erections,
nor yet the gray spiritual
fluff clocks, sketching their skeletal
longing away from the earth,
that shiver toward the wind and go,
but the downward clot of root,
unkillable, fibrous, that sucks wet
from the dirt, breaks upward,
digs in like teeth and chews the stone.
—by James Owens
Bio: Two books of James Owens's poems have been published: An Hour is the Doorway (Black Lawrence Press) and Frost Lights a Thin Flame (Mayapple Press). His poems, stories, translations, and photographs appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Superstition Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Cresset, Poetry Ireland Review, and The Stinging Fly. He lives in Wabash, Ind.