dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Genevieve Taggard

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Tropical Girl to Her Garden

Genevieve Taggard

From “The Way Things Go”

WITHHOLD your breath!

Heavy in noon and sleepy as slow death,

Garden of sweets and sours,

The cluster of my body hangs

Odorous with flowers:

Stamen serpent fangs,

Sultry, in showers.

Withhold your hand!

My boughs are bent with gold, my face is fanned

With wings of bees that, thirsting, curve and kiss.

Under green leaves green tendrils coil and hiss;

Gloom-laden branches bear me down too much.

My yellow fruit will fall without a touch

From hanging long in sultriness like this.