by Brett Rutherford
Cousins to carrion-flower,
and sisters to pitcher plants,
the milkweeds infest
front yards and weed-lots alike.
It is politically correct to plant them,
encourage them even,
because the idiot butterflies
are fond of them.
The air is full of milkweed seeds —
they fly, they light, they fly again —
they cling to leaf, to cat-paw,
dog fur and hedgehog quill.
Like wizened hags, burst out of pods,
white hair exploding on witch winds,
they trace the vectors of sinister air.
Do not mistake their innocent pallor:
this is not wedding-white, the purity
of drooping lilies.
The sour milk-sac that ejected them
is made of gossip, spite and discord.
Pluck this weed once, two take its place,
roots deep in the core of malice.
Seeds fall on sleepers who toss in misery.
They engender boils and bleeding sores.
These are no playful sprites of summer —
they go to make more of their kind —
and if one rides through an open window
it can get with child an unsuspecting virgin,
who, dying, gives birth to a murderer.
Just give them a wind
that’s upward and outward
and they’re off to the mountains
to worship that goat-head eminence,
pale lord of the unscalable crag,
Evil as white as blasted bone,
his corn-silk hair in dreadlocks,
his fangs a black obsidian
sharp as scalpels,
his mockery complete
as every dust mote sings his praises.
The bare feet of witches use
milkweed as their carpet.
Do not trust white,
as if it were winged
and ascending to heaven!
Beware, amid the bursting flowers,
the sinister pod!
