poem: triffid blooms

how sad, triffid flower

boots on my feet

blood on my boots, a mouthful of meat

i’m a rare handy butcher, trained up good

charcuterie counter/buckets of blood*

*this poem is inspired, in part, by ‘Reviving Ophelia’ by Mary Pipher. Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher | Goodreads There’s an astonishingly glum episode therein, where the author describes an interview with a highschool class. She asks them, if you weren’t a human, what would you want to be?

And the boys all describe fierce, exotic, exciting animals: lions and tigers and bears, predators all. Predators with agency, and motion, and control over their destinies.

The first girl she asks, this tragic bint says, in a dieaway pathetic little whine, “Oh, if only I could be a flaaa-werrr…”

Hey-zooz. Anyhow. You wanna be a flower, buddy-bitch? If I were a flower… then I would be a triffid. Big, and green, and a bit hairy. And mobile.

And carnivorous.