if they had let me stay inside
the elementary school biology class,
if I had not been sent to the chapel
to kneel when my parents worried
I was not ready for the reproductive
habits of flora and fauna
as it is, exile did what it does:
made the forbidden more ripe
and so I became a poet instead
when I finally got to see the parts,
it was everything my parents feared—
I was seduced
More, I said
Tell me your name, I said
without the restraint of a scientist,
the garden was left to green harder
and harder—formed lush and private
in my mind, where there is never any drought
the penchant trees, their xylem and phloem:
one path to carry water, another to descend
with sugar for the root
black walnut’s soapy smell
and its many-chambered pith, which is enough
to know it is not the tree of heaven
flora climbs my throat, no wonder
I wake up with new roots—datura, acer negundo—
in my mouth
O purple stalk, my teacher now—
yesterday you were a sign of life
but today, so I’ve learned, you are loosestrife
and I am ripping you out
before you choke
bee balm, ironweed, boneset
O anther
O stigma
O filament
don’t be mistaken:
I was loved so carefully
so tediously
like a daughter
they only forgot to ask
what I am a daughter of
