another fucking daffodil poem

The fever breaks like dawn,
if it were night & if fever
were the warm haze
of your body on my body. No body
wholly inhabits itself.
See sweat on the forehead
of a sick child, piss in the sheets,
& her brother’s nosebleed staining the sink.
Your body extends itself. See the shake
in my grandmother’s hand become
the teacup’s rattling voice.
See how she loves, & then, for good measure,
love daffodils. By the bed, on the kitchen table, daffodils
even crowning the bathroom sink as I wash my hands, falling
into the leering yellow dark of their phallic
mouths. Even mountains rise & sink. Even dawn,
dusk, even snowmelt. If your chest
is hanging heavy as oranges
let them swell & ripen
& fall. Let our cock be a daffodil.
Maybe then we sit at the table
sipping tea, both our faces tilted
to the winter sun & with my grandmother’s
scissors, my one hand over yours, we cut
the stem. Marvel how we sit—
so pretty—
in the vase.

Sean Joyce-Farley is a poet and copy editor with a B.A. in English from Smith College. Their poetry has been published in tenderness lit. You can them blogging erratically at crocussed.wordpress.com.