Rose Juggler
For Su J. Sokol
Inspired inside her tangled petit jardin
she shears a trio of yellow rose stems.
Her bare hands toss and catch one rose then two
and in a deft maneuver, left to right hand transfer
she twirls the third and works the rhythms
into a smooth-paced whirl of yellow-green.
She’s juggled more than prickly plotlines:
babies, legal briefs and protests, Seders
family apple-picking trips, leaving Brooklyn
learning French to navigate new interstitial realms.
Today she validates that yes, a lovelorn
character can juggle roses, truth cycling
into fiction worthy of each piercing thorn
her bleeding hands.
Cora Siré is the author of two novels and a collection of poetry, Signs of Subversive Innocents. A second collection is forthcoming in 2021. Based in Montréal, her work has appeared in magazines in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Further details can be found on her website, www.quena.ca