Conservatory

Happy National Poetry Month! We are honored to bring you poems from a special project, “Poetry in Bloom,” a collaboration with O, Miami Poetry Festival, poets Sandra Beasley and Neil de la Flor, and Dolly’s Florist. For all of April, these poems about flowers are being folded into origami and sent out with bouquets from Dolly’s. They also appear on O, Miami and on SWWIM in a variety of accessible ways, including audio, ALT text, and more.

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In the fernery we garland each fiddlehead
with our good news. Nuthatches skim

our lily-thatched roof, lianas helix
round our bodies while honeysuckle

laces up the lattice fanning our walls.
We stroke the trunks

of sealing-wax palms fetched
all the way from Sumatra, write

love notes on leaf lobes, our secrets
tucked down pitcher plants, the air hot

and flower-thick. Only my fingers
grow cold from leaving ice cubes

to nestle together; drop by drop
they moisten orchid roots.

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Born in Hong Kong and raised in Manila and San Francisco, Christina Lloyd holds a master's in Hispanic languages and literatures from UC Berkeley and a master's in creative writing from Lancaster University. Her work appears in various journals, most recently in Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, and Poetry Ireland. She is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University.