Corpse Flower Blooming on the 8 AM News

Camera cuts to the greenhouse. Garden Guy
winces and smiles, introduces
the gray matronly expert and her baby, the fat
yellow and green stalk unraveling
three anemic leaves. Unadorned

as woman and flower both are, the only question
he can manage: “What’s the awful stench?”
Anchors chuckle split screen, shuffle
their blank pages. “The corpse flower lives

for fifteen years, barely producing
blooms or even leaves. When she does, she radiates
her pungent fragrance from her base -here,”
she indicates a fat bulbous root, covered in soil
“her female parts to attract
insects who assist in pollination.”

Garden Guy bleats: “This stink
is attractive? “  His mind cycles back
through all his flower smells: rose
and lilac, honeysuckle and even ginger,
cloying and spicy, delicate and sweet.

He remembers the smell of his wife
on good mornings - powdered and soaped, fresh
and sterile. Not this fog

of putrescence. Then, he remembers
the oily slick scent of his wife
after a day toiling in the garden, a long day
at the office. She smells like this,

unavoidably thick, repulsive
and attractive. Sour and smelling
like all the work we do beneath soft surfaces.

Tears spring to his eyes as he moves
away from the awful woman, the awful plant,
as the camera cuts quickly away.