Illegitimate Stamen

Photo by Linda Bowman, shared under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.



I am a clone.


not because
it's cool
rather the converse

millions of brothers and sisters,
all me
and vice versa
crowd the nursery
under a thousand white-hot
artificial suns

manure and shrimp entrails
the sustenance of choice

but
because of it
and with the help of a spritzer bottle
a purple-powdered glow
emanates

mother, she was a purebred
a salmon-skinned beauty
dad, a scarlet handsome


and yet
i wait to wither.


pick me.



pick me.

Illegitimate Stamen by Michael W. Hyde is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.