After the Wikipedia page for Trillium grandiflorum
Everyone knows the real action
is in root and rhizome
making deals with mycorrhizae
trafficking in nutrients
and biding seven years.
Trust you the wind, or bees
shaking off last season’s pollen
bumbling drunkards adoze
while patient and sunfaced
you risk harvest and decay—
petals abook, flatpressed?
No. No. Seven seasons no.
What is a seed but a temptation?
Elaiosome fit for a queen
marched ant by ant
and to what, I ask?
Yes—underground again.
Gathered and kindly forgotten
and left to our real business,
dormancy and double dormancy,
wary twicemore of air and bees.
Rick Hollon (they/them or fey/fem) is a nonbinary, intersex, bi/queer writer from the American Midwest. Feir work has appeared or is forthcoming in perhappened, Whale Road Review, HELL IS REAL, The Madrigal, Stanchion Zine, Kaleidotrope, and other publications. Find them on Twitter @SailorTheia.