Sandal of Aphrodite Orchid

"Looking at the bag-shaped labellum
of the Paphiopedilum gave me the notion that
it had been left here by some kind of alien"
~Takashi Kijima, photographer, author of Orchids


Follow the italic slope
of his refined constellation, his
vulgar nebula, his search for
the insect-like space man

Be guided by colour
By the scarlet veins at the
throat, where it falls open
Measure all things against
the length of your thumb

and when you want to
know who's been loving

check between the fibres
of Aphrodite's doormat

Man Orchid

Be thou opened

Labellum resembling torso
and limbs, head of petals
Simplest accuracy

outside
roar of leaves and her
dog doesn't bark anymore
knowing his smell, sound
of his step

Cluster-like inflorescence
he sees their feet under
the sheet, watches the
half-buried churnings

His lust is pungent and she
can smell him through
the closed window, telepathy
of scent, layered at the mouth

soft tongued and accurate
wired into the word-roots
Orchis Anthropophora
aequitas

Neofinetias

Corruption,
to think its smell
makes the air heavy

Lizard Orchid

The flower is disguised
as a lizard diving headfirst into
itself


The hunters have travelled
ten miles inland with a hundred
thousand invisible seeds attached
to their trousers

Sometimes, believing themselves
to be set upon by an unseen enemy
they fill their clay pots with sticky
harvest, walk further into
the forest they do not know

Unseen movement becomes
sound pulled closer, sound to
the hunter an idea in alphabet

Eyes to detail in the humus
they stumble past the goatish
odour of their prey

Ghost Orchid

In 1882 the orchid hunter Roebelin awoke
to find the ladder to his tree house gone.
He lay on his back looking at flowers of lilac
and cinnamon through the hole in his roof.


Moon's ingress into Cancer
Shiva toenail against indigo
with dandruff stars

He comes back quietly to the house
He thinks he hears her eyelids open
Puts his hand on the place near his
stomach where he imagines
forgetting starts, stops
an out breath

The room is a dense garden of her
smell, soon he will have to say
something, soon she will reach
from under the blanket for his
hand

Lovers of the lovers whisper agitato
in their sleep somewhere past

Slick twinned legs of the Ghost
Orchid, still one with root and
nectar spur, tongued by moths
who won't strive to
outlive themselves

Early Purple Orchid

( But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them )


Unsure new lover grins
and name after name is lost
from her open mouth

Rooted in clean air of
the moon theatre
Ruined epiphyte

Is it how she unmakes the
bed? how she undresses
in the cold

Mimicry of wasp
and spider
Lost calling

She almost
holds his hand, almost
pulls back his hair
in her fist

Snarl deep-
throated aggregate
can't incant blue
exile in darkness

Her body is full
of empty chambers
trailing fingertips

maggot death stench
steeped in warm goat's milk
to make philtre

Barely touched becomes
whisper