trig(ger)

Ninety-five miles away, my father shoots two bucks with one gesture. Venison for my
mother’s fifty-third.

Like the click of the cashier instead of the brutal silence of online shopping.
Suggested for you, you might also like, because you bought.

Seven species of flower are in a bowl. I am no botanist, so I identify only four:
carnation lily rose foxglove. The not quick yellow buds.

More water. You can drink from my strawless lidded.

Biology’s letters. Alpha and omega of phloem and xylem. Vascular phone. Stems in
water cell.

Then Dad gets a third deer for the night. Every mass has gravity. My body for other
bodies too. Heliotropism.

But if I ate the sun, I would be embarrassed by the lack of blood. Iron want. Mars.
Venus. Let them synthesize. Many plants agree with me, become carnivorous.









Vanessa Couto Johnson recently earned her MFA from Texas State University. Her work has appeared in Hot Metal Bridge, shufPoetry, A cappella Zoo, Liebamour, blossombones, and other places. She has poems forthcoming in Really System, Sassafras, Eratio, and Dinosaur Bees. She runs treksift.com, blogs at meansofpoetry.com, and has a BA in both English and philosophy from Rice University. She lives in Wimberley, Texas.