In the wildflowers of Mount Olympus, I plant you
hummingbird houses. I let their clementine walls slope
& curl in Grecian filigree, the beginnings of an urn
cast in Etruscan bronze. On this side of self-preservation,
I fertilize poems the size of prayers. A spring pregnant
with deer, I sprawl along jawlines of milkweed.
When I leave, my mother will sip from a well of wine
& weep every wounded animal into another graceless winter.
Centuries ago, my husband raped six pomegranate seeds
abed my lips & my hair turned snow overnight. The distance,
a trampled footprint plundering virgin soil. So the seasons
scatter my letters to wisteria, all my pleas unheard & adrift.

—Serrina Zou

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