Drawing #1 by MD Kerr

 


 

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.

 


 

 

             

             

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

 

 “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

 

 

Stories

Poems