Shall I Compare Thee to a Carnivorous Plant?
Laura Thompson (University of Cincinnati, US)
No other creature seems
quite right. Rattlesnakes
give fair warning.
A leech wouldn’t
swallow much of me.
But you, with your roots
embedded in soil where lesser
plants would starve, feed
on anyone with wings,
anyone lucky but careless.
I call you Drosera.
Your drops of low-lying
mucilage shimmer
like sequins, fragile
as dew, sticky as love.
I call you Dionaea
of the species Muscipula,
goddess of pink interiors
and fluttering razor
lashes that snap
shut when pressed.
I call you Nepenthe,
pitcher of ambrosia.
Your sweetness
pulls me to your
edges, where I slip into a flood
of juices. It takes me
weeks to realize I am dead.
Laura Thompson earned her MFA from Vermont College of the Fine Arts and is currently enrolled in the PhD in English program at the University of Cincinnati. Her work has appeared in Tiger’s Eye, The Fertile Source, Oysters and Chocolate, and Stirring: A Literary Collection. She resides in Cincinnati with her gecko, tortoise, axolotl, and hedgehog.
