The cactus gestures with a slender, spiny branch
from its red pot.
“This is for flowers,” it hisses,
taunting purple bean pods.
The purple bean pods have nothing to say.
Twisted, curled, withered, dry
they have nothing to say.
Scattered on the white bookcase,
stems like burnt matchsticks.
The cactus is still at it: poking
their dirty hulls and making threats.
I can't tell if they’re used to this treatment or not.
These bean pods, they're models.
Lindsay gathers them behind the grocery store, on the dirt
path that leads to railroad tracks.
In her paintings
they are sometimes two or three feet long and yellow,
or brown, or blue.
What does the cactus want?
Why don’t the bean pods resist?
The cactus rears back and winds up as if to strike
with a branch I take hold of to break off a spine.
On the tip of my thumb
a drop of blood expands, and heavy, runs.
Standing in the doorway
Lindsay twists a fork in a plate of spaghetti.
Metal tines scrape the glaze.