wants more than anything to make a black rose
having given up on blues,
the murky ghosts
of lavender
but the black he claims to have created
boasts maroon throats
of blood that will not drain
so I told him, take your black
corsage flick off the thorns
and place it in her coffin
before you close the lid.
Tricia Knoll
Tricia Knoll's is a Vermont poet whose work appears widely in journals, anthologies, and five collections of poetry including Checkered Mates (Kelsay Books) which came out in 2021 and Let's Hear It for the Horses (The Poetry Box) available February 1, 2022 and which took third place in the press' 2020 chapbook contest. Her work has been nominated for 9 Pushcart Prizes and her collection How I Learned To Be White received the 2018 Human Rights Indie Book Award for Motivational Poetry. Knoll is a contributing editor to Verse Virtual. Website: triciaknoll.com
