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      • Delete
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      • How Much of Reality Can Be Observed
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      • Planet Caravan
      • The Journey of a Minute
      • The Circus of Scars
      • Mosaic
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    • Her Voice Remains (2017)
    • Watch Every Second (2018)
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  • Home
  • About
  • Staff
    • Staff 2021 -22
    • Staff 2020
    • Staff 2019
    • Staff 2019
  • Issues
    • A Fire of Words
    • Editor's Note 2022 >
      • The Floor Wallows Lower
      • Cornflowers
      • Erudite
      • That One Morning
      • mom, im afraid
      • selenophilia
      • Roses and Rainbows
      • If a poisonous snake bites itself, will it die?
      • Rochester
      • Crown of Branches
      • Stairs to the Sea
      • A Poem Written Entirely From Advertisements
      • Pyromania
      • silhouette of a bird against winter stars
      • thunderstorm in the bedroom
      • A Night in Recovery
      • sleeping gypsie
      • paper dolls&goodbyes
      • We Are Women
      • Village Air
      • Sunshine's Laughter
      • the male gaze
      • The Forensic Entomologist
      • Lacking
      • Drowning
      • Adelie
    • Create the Wonders We Dream (2021)
    • Editor's Note >
      • Zove
      • I'm Sorry
      • Fake Smile
      • My Friend the Balloon
      • Eyes Intertwined
      • Perfect
      • Only a Moment
      • A Dangerous Word
      • My Dreams
      • The Last 100 Meters
      • The Green Void (Villanelle)
      • The Whimsical Galaxy (Sestina)
      • The Silent Kindness
      • Pressure
      • Table on the Hill
      • The Yukon
      • The Shore
      • Repentance
      • Her and I
      • Infections of the Soul
      • Threads
      • Dream of a High Schooler
      • Empty
      • little flame
      • scars
      • black and white
      • The Cat
      • Joy
      • Sweet Honey Bee Stings
      • If There Were One Day
      • Delete
      • Our Hearts to Central Vietnam
      • him or Him?
      • Ocean
      • Es Llaner Beach
      • Sewn Together
      • Rain
      • Yes, I Like
      • The Legacy of the Moon
      • The Wind Whimpers
      • From Here I See
      • To Feel Clean
      • Red
      • Survival
      • Substance
      • Golden Lies
      • Midnight Tango
      • Ode to a Spleen
      • Modern Siren
      • The Night's Diamond Tears
      • Beats In Double Time
      • A Day in the Flight
      • Carved By Venus
      • Lifeline
      • Everest
      • Education
      • How Much of Reality Can Be Observed
      • What is a Spork
      • What is the difference between love and in love
      • What would you have wanted? me to say
      • Planet Caravan
      • The Journey of a Minute
      • The Circus of Scars
      • Mosaic
      • Color
      • Love and Acceptance
    • Colors I Never Knew Existed (2020)
    • Her Voice Remains (2017)
    • Watch Every Second (2018)
    • Words Become Reality (2019)
  • Blog
  • Submit
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Cornflowers
By: Philip Avilov

Picture
Your face is halberd silver,
your gestures airy.
The smell of gaudy motel curtains lingers
in cornflowers pressed in a jerry.

Darling, that's what you really like.
These make you feel fragile and loud -
agrestal paint tubes, restless and spiked,
the blue devilishly squeezed out.

An orphaned flower of the burdock breed
knows no rival in blue among weeds.
Chagall's riddle, Chagall's mark,
rubles to Narva's triumphal arch!

They grew when Solomon the Wise
gingerly sucked on life's marrow bone.
In a field of bread is a bit of sky.
We are united by sky alone.

Like blue stained glass, so gothically jagged,
they stretch their heads out through chant and stone.
The field is loved, but the sky is beloved.
We are united by sky alone.

Undines and cows soar by the sun.
Keep an umbrella when you're on the throne.
Motherlands differ, the sky is one.
We are united by sky alone.

How did the cornflower seed even spread
to Champs-Élysées (pronounced properly)?
How do you braid a wreath on the head
of Grand Opera, Grand Opera!

The globalized age filled the sky with smoke.
Confused on who's you and who is the clone?
Don't stuff our faces with lead till we choke -
we are united by sky alone.

These canvas have fled the fascist troops
and dug their delirium into the loam.
The forbidden sky is rolled up in a tube,
but we are alive by sky alone.

Not that the echo of "why'd you allow this"
weakened the cries of Tituba -
the stolen paintings, tubed up and well-practiced,
howl like an archangel's tuba!

Get off the train, hear the call, keep your eyes peeled.
The grasses heave.
The cornflowers spurred the field -
running away, but you can't ever leave...

Go out at night and nearly get rich,
the field's pupils like Coketown towers.
Ah, Mark Zaharovich, Mark Zaharovich,
all is cornflowers, all is cornflowers...
​
Not a Bonaparte, not a Clementi,
ah, Mark Zaharovich, paint me
a testament in lapis tones -
WE ARE UNITED BY SKY ALONE.


Writer's Statement: I took inspiration from Mark Chagall's dream-like paintings. I hope the reader sees beyond the subject - the cornflower - in favor of the stories behind it.
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