after it is eaten
(by whatever is hungry;
by whatever is there)

the fruit
becomes

decay-mold-shit,

from which arises:

two limp fingernails:
sickly and light-starved--
the color of pond scum
or baby puke;

then--
slowly--
amid the ever-darkening green,
a hook presses up,
pygmy and frail,

like the neck
of a malnourished brontosaurus,
from the tip of which emerges:
not a head
(nothing so reassuring)
but rather another sort of structure,
more bulbous in its approximate symmetry--
something like a scrotum.

All this before:

A flower.

Rachel Rodman (she/her) is the author of three collections: Mutants + Hybrids, Art is Fleeting, and Exotic Meats + Inedible Objects. Her fiction and experimental poetry have appeared in Penumbric, The Alexander Review, State of Matter, and many other publications. Her art celebrates evolutionary relationships.

www.rachelrodman.com