Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Caravaggesque!” by Silvia Falsaperla.

---

Caravaggesque!

By Silvia Falsaperla

The tulips of bold spring colours

were in full bloom

            now they linger in liminal.

I haven’t chucked them into the bin

at the faintest wrinkling of petals;

decay has its wondrous

                      mutations—

the purple petals flap open,

an unfurled upside down

                 umbrella

exposing the pistil and 

stigma—so immodestly phallic!

and the curled red petals are

                womanly labial,

            even pinwheel propellers;

the gradations of magenta are

                swirls of silken skirts

            on the catwalk;

and the white pointy petals are a

                 medusa face contorted

              in fabulous ways;

finally, the yellow blushing one

is a strange new flower,

                 an abstract picasso

a flapping, twisting flame

                 augural and beautiful

when in the morning

                 it is the day’s glory.

---

Copyright © Silvia Falsaperla

First published in Uproar Literary Blog, Lawrence House Centre for the Arts, 2023.

Silvia Falsaperla has published both poetry and prose in Canadian and American literary journals and anthologies. Her poetry has been translated into Italian, Spanish and Japanese. Recently she published her first book The Garden of Kolymbethra and Other Poems and Stories about Sicily with Legas Publishing. “Caravaggesque!” won second prize in the Carmen Ziolkowski Poetry Prize, 2023.

---

Subscribe to Poetry Pause, or support Poetry Pause with a donation today!

---