The Apologist

Orange lilies are not an apology. Maybe crimson columbines, if you picked them naked,

were caught by a ranger in your all-together, and given a ticket,  yeah, then maybe it’s an apology.

If you offered your herbarium of pilfered wildflowers you’d pressed and labeled: “Flowers of the North Fork of the American River, of which I am most proud,” with taxonomic rank penciled in next to each entry: class, subclass, order and species, then maybe it’s an apology.

A recognition somehow of effort, not a florist phone call delivering flowers unseen.

Orange lilies are not an apology.  And don’t even think about roses–don’t–no matter the color. A rose is just a weed in the cornfield of this argument.

Author Biography:

Maria Garcia Teutsch is a poet and editor. She has published over 20 journals of poetry as editor-in-chief of the Homestead Review, published by Hartnell College in Salinas, and Ping-Pong journal of art and literature, published by the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California. She has forthcoming work in the Whole Beast Rag, The Porter Gulch Review, Women’s Arts Quarterly, and the anthology, “Where Nothing Happens, the Best of the Henry Miller Library.” She is currently working on a manuscript titled,  ‘American Poet Living in a Muslim Country.’ For more: mariateutsch.blogspot.com