Featured Poem: Snapdragon by Medbh McGuckian

Medbh McGuckian

Snapdragon

It may be described as everybody’s flower,

Like an ordinary rose, choosing cloudy

Weather, quite unaffected by the rain,

Sunproof, with golden lip and light green

Eye, flounce upon flounce, and undercolouring

Of cherry, oversheen of clear, soft, old

Garden cerise. When in fourth leaf,

It throws a small percentage of blue

To its nodding pale cheddar pink or pleasing

Primrose companion, a shade more salmon

In the improved sunset’s strongest of orange,

Beautifully netted skin; expressing not more

Than five words of greetings to the young

Grass (it may be meadow turf)

Whose round seedlings feed off dark rays.

Published in Five Points volume 13.2.