The Garden of Sex II — Blackbird Archive

← v3n2, Fall 2004

Here, purples of salvia cast

tiered whorls of shade

from each small dark torch.

Their lingering pungency

masks every doubt. Their

healing denies

any violence, the incisions of loss.

They gainsay with blurred

coaxing silences

the sulphurous tansy's sun-stricken

risk. And so they erase

its posed oppositions—sly poison

or bright, piquant herb? One

more thing

doubled. You might wish

for more clarity. Still,

believe this: there's no wounding here, no

griefs, deprivation. Only

what seeps and what tangles,

denying you nothing, or nothing

you want.

desire nature body

Jeanne Larsen

Jeanne Larsen is the author of two books of poetry: Why We Make Gardens (& other Poems) (Mayapple Press, 2010), and James Cook in Search of Terra Incognita: A Book of Poems (University Press of Virginia, 1979), which won the AWP Award Series in Poetry. She is the author of two of literary translations: Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon: Women’s Poems from Tang China (BOA Editions Ltd., 2005), and Brocade River Poems: Selected Works of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao (Princeton University Press, 1987). She has published an e-novel, Sally Paradiso (Brown Fedora Books, 2009), and three print novels, all from Henry Holt & Co.: Manchu Palaces (1996), Bronze Mirror (1991), and Silk Road (1989). Larsen teaches in the Jackson Center for Creative Writing at Hollins University. Photo by Olivia P. Body