Hyacinths
A meditation at a symposium on queer Irish poetry: 25 January 2025

They have been roughly stuffed
     into a glass jug
     whose tapering throat

is not quite wide enough
     to accommodate
     their collective girth,

     so their cut ends float
halfway down the water,

     white & indecent
     as a razor clam
exposing the full nude length
     of its edible self.

     Specimens. Long thumbs.
Entirely subjected.

Stripped of the privacy
     the soil afforded
...