the ardent endingmonarch’s ardor begana large wedge-shapedcloud in the springthousands were takinga fluent thoughtful napre nocturne, aloneall of them witch-doctorsor in a Chinese dreamwoken-up philosophersthe single golden ruleoverarches, ark or pendantlimpidity of cloudsoverlord my monarchthe length of two thumbslight fills the windowsclings to sun strutsgrows outward, leafingmonarch emerges steeledblood jams into wingsall that tickling insectclasped to cock’s fuzzis a trance, inside of syrupsa poison swapped aboutbitter-tasting heart’sspasm, an orange avoida million pages turningthe library of springspotted with shadowsthe piteous monarchpropagates, replenishesejaculates homewardto completion in summerthe monarch’s a cloudwoven of monarchs, oneleaf journey’s lengthpulsating on, from ghostsand milkweed depositsa universe of monarchsseeded the whole fieldlarvae munching larvaepods, grow milkweed fatmoult to tiger-stripestoxin bright, leaf eatingregals, the skin splitspupates, recycles intogold-studded chrysalisto force out the thoraxpulled free stretchinghardening new strutsrests, monarch, waitslistening to scytheslazy winter monarchon a warm day venturesout for nectar, rubberin the saps & rough stemsloves the poisoned milkyfields, sleepy his “eyes”open above the coccyxlooking for black-smudgedveiny queens, wooedby the harmfully harmlesslauzengiers, wing deepslips between sign & referentare not what they seemmonarch’s no mimicno midas, this goldfeelermelts you to the orenympho or mendicantexasperating progressdiscovered by millionswith wing covered sexesgets sticky all overin Zitácuaro it’s quietpiteous monarch, goroving, unfolding, treesbranched into flameswould that you lasted
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Written on news of a forest fire at the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) sanctuary in Mexico. “lauzengiers” is from Old Occitan and means “flatterer.” The flattery of the edible viceroy mimic (Limenitis archippus) threatens the monarchs’ warning system—bright coloration meant to warn predators of the distasteful cardenolides the monarchs sequester from milkweed. When roosting monarchs unfold their wings to gather sunlight, it is as though an entire tree bursts into flame.
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- June 17, 2024
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“Unfolder” from POLITICAL CACTUS POEMS: by Jonathan Skinner.
Published by Palm Press on April 1, 2005.
Copyright © 2005 by Jonathan Skinner.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Jonathan Skinner is a poet, editor, translator, and critic, known for founding the journal ecopoetics. His poetry collections include The Archive (Gong Farm, 2024), Chip Calls (Little Red Leaves, 2014), Birds of Tifft (BlazeVOX, 2011), Warblers (Albion Books, 2010), and Political Cactus Poems (Palm Press, 2005). He has published numerous essays at the intersection of poetry, ecology, activism, landscape and sound studies—most recently on Documentary Environmental Poetics for the Routledge Companion to Ecopoetics (2023) and on Joanne Kyger’s Eco-Dharma for Poet in Place and Time: Critical Essays on Joanne Kyger (Clemson University Press, 2024). He teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick.
Skinner's work engages the various meanings of life outdoors, in the shape of a changing response to questions posed by the environments the poet physically inhabits. In part, the poetry operates as an instrument of research into a particular natural environment or a geological formation or species. In exchange, it offers forms of life measured to particular places, an invitation to inhabit the evolutionary imagination of the senses and of those places. His first book-length collection, Political Cactus Poems, which stem from the poet's life in the Southwest, challenges the pristine agenda of nature poetry by hybridizing themes from the lives of humans and cacti.
"These poems direct and redirect our attention to the larger ethical issues of political and natural environments."
—Juliana Spahr
"Skinner's (poems) are primers of attentive engagement; not only its pleasures and responsibilities, but also its animations and metamorphoses."
—Charles Bernstein
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