Knock their eyes out

The tulips are almost gone, their naked stems suffering the indignity of losing all their petals.

Here’s one that welcomed me on my walk to work for a few weeks. It was on U St NW, near 5th St, and I love how it just sort of peeked out between the bars of the fence.

I painted a few etegami of it… wishing I could capture the red RED of the petals

This first one features a line, “as unexpected as a tulip,” from a Ted Kooser poem, The second one, above, features a line from the Alice Ostriker poem, “The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog.” The line reads:  “To be blessed / said the dark red tulip / is to knock their eyes out / with the slug of lust/ implied by / your up-ended skirt.” The rest of the poem is a knock-out too.