Victoria Bosch Murray
Moonflower or Datura inoxia
After days of rain with thunder,
the oboe of grief or longing, fog
hovering thick and desperate between
brick duplexes and fire escapes choking
Dorchester Ave, I visit my pilfered
moonflowers, transplanted against
their will and nature to a plastic tub
on my balcony, a quiet fetish. I count
them but don’t touch them, their tiny
leaves potent and curled, dusted with
dirt after spatters of rain. They are
perfect, complete, mine– but one
heart leaf has been cut by teeth, a bite
mark against the whole. Who has
looted what I first took? What drugged
being has tasted my toxin?
Victoria Bosch Murray reads “Moonflower or Datura inoxia”
Victoria Bosch Murray has two chapbook of poems: Prayer for Plum and Sinew and On the Hood of Someone Else’s Car. Her poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Bennington Review, Cimarron Review, Field, Greensboro Review, The Kenyon Review, Salamander, Phoebe, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in Boston, Massachusetts.