
FLORA FIELD
Flora Field is a poet from Oregon.
Poetry
MINE & FLORA'S TERCETS
I tell Flora to perform time; she breathes in out in out fast until
her body disappears until the moon disappears until morning incessant
loathing and light dances into her window
When Flora told me she didn’t know how to be she meant she didn’t know how to stop
thinking how to stop feeling how to stop measuring things against each other
placing them above or below or beside and trying to determine which was best
Flora lies in her bed and stares at the pink and cream silks drifting on the floor
from the little winds outside the blue light looming behind
their silhouettes unbearably charming which is to say feminine and beautiful
Feminine and beautiful a delicate lament Flora smothers me with
She wants to know that things are put together well that the parts cohere
I’m not here to please Flora which isn’t to say that the self always has to be escaped from
I want Flora to just become and then to be
I want Flora to move everywhere all at once instead of arriving somewhere then staying
I want Flora to no longer want and instead to wait
Flora lies in her bed and stares at the pink and cream silks drifting on the floor
I ask her what she is waiting for such enormous passivity for a naked girl
She doesn’t answer tells me there isn’t enough room inside for me
There were many rooms I let Flora inside of I even bathed her every night
sometimes morning too sometimes Flora walked but whatever happened in the space
between the lying and the walking she and I never knew
Flora waits for me to tell her to get up but I watch her a reclining nude
Time stops touching her time heavy and warm pours around
her form but not onto it I cannot look away Flora waits