The *** of a rose is fluid, and pertains to no one. It curls, and pulls lucid around thorns and dark mahogany bark, You may be blessed, and see her red face turned to face the sun - or she may crawl in the undergrowth, shrugging off the *** you gave her and show her floral palms to the dark. We all desire her velvet powder petals. We all wish to do as we did as children,Β and take a hip between our fingertips - And crush the sweet, sticky sap from its vessel. But leave her be, and let her petals rot where they fall or next year she will not show her face at all.
this is actually one of my favourite poems i've written. I tried to use old fashioned imagery - the idea of a rose - to put across a feminist statement about my own sexuality, and how people seek to control it. The poem intends to encourage my, and other womens, own autonomy in ***. The imagery of the child crushing the rose hip is an observation of mens brutish, childish, careless sexuality in the way they treat female bodies.