By Jane Barnes
I love flowers they know true
Nourishment you are one though
That won’t open you stingy lily
I have taken up swimming at night
Swam as at twelve in an indoors
Tub with a girl very sexy not
(I repeat) not practicing this
the real thing lovers for a year
every day after school we
yanked off our blouses and
leaped into her bed Knock knock
at the door Girls? What’s going
on in there? Go away Mom
we’re so tired if she’d really
understood us she might have died
Jane Barnes has published poetry in Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Bi Women, Wormwood Review, River Styx, and Massachusetts Review. Her stories have been published in a dozen magazines and collections and have received three literary prizes. The tribeweaver, a collection of Jane’s poetry over 25 years, is in manuscript.