Queen of the Night

Epiphyllum oxypetalum


No need for the moon
if she is open after dark,

completely awake, a circus
of exposure. Fear to touch

her. She could slip her concentric
tongues around an index finger, or

the finger that used to wear
a ring for the pleasure of being

a de-flower, an already at an end.
Her blossom is a honeymoon, all

through the night and gone at the first
insistence of sun. Her dry sickle,

the pink cloak in the morning,
a real marriage with its hints of blood

and bloodlessness, a white-
on-white-on-white derangement,

spiked petals unlocking, un-fisting,
unleashing, her expulsion.

---

Andrea Carter is a poet and writer from Southern California. Her work appears in Quartet, San Diego Poetry Annual, Fourteen Hills, and The Florida Review. She is a recent Bread Loaf alum and is finishing her second novel in a YA murder mystery series. She enjoys hiking, travel, surfing, and drinking lots of coffee. She is a lecturer at UC San Diego in the Muir College Writing Program.