https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2004%252F09%252F07.html
Poem: "My Mother's Pansies," by Sharon Olds, from Blood, Tin, Straw (Random House).
My Mother's Pansies
| And all that time, in back of the house, there were pansies growing, some silt blue, some silt yellow, most of them sable red or purplish sable, heavy as velvet curtains, so soft they seemed wet but they were dry as powder on a luna's wing, dust on an alluvial path, in a drought summer. And they were open like lips, and pouted like lips, and they had a tiny fur-gold v, which made bees not be able to not want. And so, although women, in our lobes and sepals, our corollas and spurs, seemed despised spathe, style-arm, standard, crest, and fall, still there were those plush entries, night mouth, pillow mouth, anyone might want to push their pinky, or anything, into such velveteen chambers, such throats, each midnight-velvet petal saying touch-touch-touch, please-touch, please-touch, each sex like a spirit-shy, flushed, praying. |
– z 2020-05-11 10:03 UTC</div>