Tree Riesener – Three Poems

in my room that night

you
collected
bird song
flowers
all the green stuff
of the world

then
from the mass of green
you separated for me

sycamore
elderflower
broom

left
a single wilted bloom
on my pillow

threw
sugar on fire
flames
orange and blue

goblin gift

for christina rossetti

watching from shadow
shy

I leave

near your hand

white plate of banded gold

plump unpecked cherries
bright-fire-like barberries
peaches with a velvet nap

mint bruised and fragrant for your mouth

honeysuckle’s one sweet drop
pooling juices amber scarlet.
please

dream of an underground river

river

flowing through rock
my bedded body flooded with desire
not so unusual
one reason why we sleep
but a tunneling branch follows
the sun burns inches above
you mutable branch you sun in my own sky
thrusting through ground
stock pregnant
with arabesque and reticent creatures
pallid tendrils weighted
with translucent cases of
creeping apple-green worms
small angels winged
each blossom with its own being
of shape and color
buds slightly unfurled full-blown
oh if I were not alone
myself an anchorite gardener yet blessing
dreams

Tree Riesener is the author of  Sleepers Awake, a collection of short fiction, winner of the Eludia Award from Hidden River Arts, published by Sowilo Press in 2015.  Her collection of poetry inspired by astronomy, The Hubble Cantos, was published in 2016 by Aldrich Press.  A collection of ekphrastic poetry, EK, will be published in 2016 by Cervena Barva Press.  Her achievements include three first prizes for fiction at the Philadelphia Writers Conference, finalist for Black Lawrence Press’s Hudson Prize, finalist in PANK magazine’s Fiction Chapbook Contest, the William Van Wert Fiction Award, semi-finalist in the Pablo Neruda Competition, three short stories staged in the Writing Aloud Series of InterAct Theatre, Philadelphia, a Hawthornden Fellowship at Hawthornden Castle, Scotland, and three poetry chapbooks: Liminalog, a collection of ghazals and sijo, Inscapes, poems of psychological landscape, and Angel Poison. Tree has published poetry and prose in numerous literary magazines. She is former Managing Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal and former Contributing Editor to The Ghazal Page. More at treeriesener.com.