Poetry by Adam Doniger
NEGATIVE BOTANY (I ALMOST WEPT) 

plants do not actually sleep nor do they lie or even bluff
they do, however, expose their genitalia (Anne Carson)

I climbed the tallest mountain in New York in the middle of Summer to find refugial alpine plants. 

pansies for thoughts,
a sick rose;
remembrance for rosemary,

To their flowers, I took my hand lens, and to my surprise I could not find a vagina nor a penis nor sperm,

death I remember,
glossy purple clots,
and shadows numberless

nor metaphor.
I could only whisper what I saw,

when people read erotic symbols into my paintings they are really
talking of their own affairs (Georgia O’Keefe)

I almost wept

but I am learning to shout,
for example here, the genres of aerial roots:

stolons (runners)
prop-roots (stranglers),
haustoria (parasitic insertions),
knees (snorkels).

Adam Doniger (he/him) is a poet and plant scientist based in Ithaca, NY. When not at the lab wondering what tomatoes dream, he is at home cuddling with his cat, Wallace.

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #49.

Submit to Cleaver!