Landscape with Riffraff and Poison: A Poem by Lynn Melnick | The New Republic

Landscape with Riffraff and Poison

This morning, libertines peer from frosted glass
because they want to learn how I triumph, so

I am going to confess this once

     and then I am going to confess it again
 
in different ways I won’t admit to but never mind.
This won’t be the last time
 
     I let the riffraff envenom my body
 
while they pretend to be heroic.
This won’t be the first time I faint against a building
 
where the weeds escape the cracks
into some kind of suffocating, mangled abandon.
 
 
Slumped against the sunlit stucco
I fail to keep my wits about me in a choke of triggers.
 
I down this dandelion poison because the promise
pitches a floral danger I could live inside.
 
I didn’t emerge well-trained into this savage vista
because all the houseplants were succulent, and,
 
while anyone could witness rot writ all over my blighted arrangement,
 
     no one stepped in.