MD Kerr lives in Oxford, United Kingdom, and writes fantastical fiction and poetry, with a special love of nature poetry, poetic forms, and surprise pirates. She’s pseudonymously published a novel, novellas, and short stories, and ghostwritten seven novels. Under her own name, she’s published short fiction and poetry in a range of journals. She teaches creative writing as The Writers’ Greenhouse.
Drawing #1
“Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors or primeval forests or stars” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Orchids grow so high in the jungle, if you didn’t know then
you’d say they didn’t exist, waxy-lined – not you, though; you and I
understand how the furtive petals splay, out of sight; we would
never betray the dark pink secrets of its lapping labellum, never
expose the dappled shadows of its soft throat to careless talk.
Those who can’t dream their eyes up through the humid canopy to
where they peachly, whitely, redly lick the air think that
all truths are down to earth, punchable facts and grids. A person
like that needs the word “epiphytic” to believe anything about
roots that live off air, dangling and loosely draped like a boa
around an outstretched branch. Such people cling to facts like constrictors
till they still the delicate pulse. Perhaps they just don’t know or
perhaps they’re angry that orchids elude them in the hot wet air. Primeval
things are always the hardest to prove, deep in forests
where perhaps we used to fly. We can’t explain or
convince such people. We can only climb lianas, through the orchids, towards stars.
MD Kerr