The petals are glossy, red streaked with orange,
look like those stretchy lollipops sold on beaches,
seem so new they might bow inward and become
something else again. The airport in Amsterdam
was a year ago now, had shops swerved into its
corners: I found the fiery burst of a florist and the
packets of seeds were so weightless and rattling.
And you have gifted a spark. I am back where the
travellators span glass arcs and I have somewhere
to be, however reluctantly. This garden may be
the jewelled pocket of a fear-timeline but the
tulips have anchored themselves, make invisible
things digest and circulate. And apparently the
shocked stripes are themselves caused by a virus.
By Alicia Byrne Keane
Alicia Keane is a PhD student from Dublin, Ireland, working on an Irish Research Council-funded PhD study problematizing ‘vagueness’ and translation in the work of Samuel Beckett and Haruki Murakami, at Trinity College Dublin. Her poems have appeared in The Moth, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Abridged, The Honest Ulsterman, and Entropy. Alicia’s Twitter: keane_byrne