14. At the Museum of Flowers

When I say zinnias do you see them,

Mexico colors, in high Kansas summer

behind the red brick garage? Is your mother

freckling in the sun, holding the green

garden hose gushing water into the bed,

making creamy mud shine like icing?

Do the monarchs light and flutter

from frilled bloom to bloom?

And can you lift them as your father

taught between your first grade fingers,

set one on each shoulder, and

walk into the house wearing wings?

All that summer and deep

into September, will you visit zinnias

hunting for plundered flight?

— Lori Brack

Lori Brack’s work has appeared in The Packingtown Review, North American Review, Rosebud, and other journals. Her first chapbook, a poetic script for a work of performance art in collaboration with artist Ernesto Pujol, A Fine Place to See the Sky, was published in 2010.

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