Lucia Perillo’s poem ‘Daisies vs. Bees’

“Daisies vs. Bees” from Lucia Perillo’s “Time Will Clean the Carcass Bones,” published by Copper Canyon Press, used with permission, reviewed for the LA Times by Craig Teicher.

[Poem]

Who could not love the Shasta daisies, lining the walk,
the difficult daisies,
the first difficulty being that they smell like rotting meat?
Okay, you can say the smell teaches us that there is more to summer
than girls in yellow bathing suits and new-mown grass —
if you want the beauty you have to take a whiff of death.
Okay, I know, I am not a baby:
dear Mother Nature,
deliver me the contract and I will sign.
The second difficulty being that they attract the bees
to which a person can be fatally allergic, though
okay, it titillates, checking the mailbox in August,
a game of agility and speed,
the goal being to outwit the feral mind.
Okay, I admit I’ve thought of dousing myself with perfume
to tilt the game in their direction.
I call this “going to the bees” —
didn’t Robert Lowell say, if people were equipped with switches,
who wouldn’t be tempted, at some point,
to flick themselves off?
I admit I have romantic ideas about lying down in blossoms, though
okay, at the first tingle of my windpipe’s swelling shut, I think
I’d grab the EpiPen and jab the needle in my thigh.
I call this “going to the flowers” —
and in my conjuration of the jab,
I am as impassive as a samurai, outside among the daisies,
because you have to show the bees you have no fear.
As the daisies smear everything with their odor,
how do we decide who wins, given that the bees offer us
just their speeding particles
versus the steadfast flowers?
Given that the eyes somehow or other will close, but,
okay, okay, we know the nose will never?