thigmonasty

My students are always asking me

why I don’t have children. I’d like

to tell them how the venus fly trap

shoots up a bloom far above

the hunger of the hinged lobes

and trichomes, how the plant knows

it needs moths or bees, some small vehicle

for pollination, continuation. But

the flower is a drain, a real energy suck

and once it’s done, below,

those toothy fringed leaves turn black.

I want to tell them this: I imagine a mother

as always hungry, and a daughter

as always just out of reach.

Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a biology teacher in Chicago, but she escapes to Michigan for summer break. Her work has been published in Whale Road Review,  SWWIM, Cobra Milk, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. She is the author of one full length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies (Unsolicited Press) and two chapbooks, As Wild Animals (Dancing Girl Press) and Running Aground (Finishing Line Press).