The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Laura Sobbott Ross

VIOLETS

My grandmother showed us

how to tear the petals off violets,

peel back the flocked purples,

revealing a core no bigger

than a child's eyelash. We had no name

for pistil or stigma, only

that they formed a head and torso

in a tunic of orange and white—

an elfin fairy, green tendril legs

soaking in a tub of petal-spur. 

We were used to my grandmother's hands

at the rim of a cast iron pot,

threading bean pods, shucking

corn husks and crayfish tales, scraping

hen feathers from a scalded carcass.

Now they unfurled pixies between heart

shaped leaves— all those

fairies with pollen in their hair,

soaking their green, night-frolicked soles

while our giddy fingers plucked

away the thin walls of their rooms.

My grandmother's calico skirts catching

the dusk of our raucously minted purples,