Dead-heading
You can keep your dozen upright yellow soldiers with browning
edged curled tissue-paper petals, wrapped in shining cellophane
no rose-feed soaked oasis will raise them from the thirsty dead
or assuage the foliaged guilt of your forecourt sex-flower offering
and they can stay forever sheathed in their body-bag, all fragrance
embalmed alongside the floral language of joy, in my steel-toed bin
and, no, I don’t want you to grab a Waterford vase from the top shelf
just in case it falls and fill it with gargling water to stagnate to green
as limp leaves cigar roll and thornless stems prick my mind
to recall why I want nothing from you, no half-hearted gifts
and there will be no fanfares or frantic floral dancing when I tell you
no more barely there bouquets, no more piddly-arse posies.
Jilly Munro has had her childhood interest in poetry re-ignited during an Open University English Literature degree. She will has recently been published in The New Writer and two poems appeared in the Kent & Sussex Poetry Society’s Folio publication this Autumn.