Roses

Roses that smell like the ginkgo tree, the female ginkgo tree that produces a rotten smell to attract the male tree although trees do not have legs, do not move, yet somehow reproduce, some of the roses smell like this, but others smell good you know like roses should smell, rose-scented, pink, red, and yellow roses that sometimes smell like the sex of the gingko tree but mostly smell like roses, in the summer, in the evening, the park is like a cemetery, it has that feeling, and that smell, the smell of rancid butter, the smell of the sex of the gingko tree, the roses are blooming and some are wilting, some have yet to open, and there is a giant egg made of stone and a sign that says do not lean on the sculpture or sit on it either, and this egg is in the middle of three other stone sculptures with an indent in which the egg would fit perfectly and these are arranged around the egg in a circle, and inside of this we sit and talk and our voices echo, we talk about mosquitoes and encephalitis and death, the roses go on doing what roses do and the smell of the sex of the gingko tree permeates the air, is everywhere the roses are.

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Erica Anzalone is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and

currently teaches at Drake University.  Her work has appeared or is

forthcoming in Pleiades, Sentence, and Maverick.

Archived at http://lit.konundrum.com/poetry/anzalonee_poems.php