Someone sticks a human
ear on the three hundred year-old
oak in the city square.
It looks like a pale pink dried fruit
catching the scrap of a scream,
of a siren, of the crackling
of a wildfire. Filled with pain,
it blooms to become more
delicate, pinker, it blooms
to lend an ear to the green blood
of the ancient tree whispering: decay
is the root of this earth, acid core
of life. Here pink flowers rise
from each rotten body, both human
and more than human beings.
Hear this: we are nothing
more than fertilisers.
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Özge Lena
Picture René Magritte, La voix du sang (The Voice of Blood), 1959.
Özge Lena is an internationally published poet who appears in The London Magazine, Oxford Climate Society Blog, Mslexia, Hunger Mountain Review, and in numerous magazines and anthologies across continents. She recently presented her poetic approach “Catapoetics: Poetry of the Catastrophe” at the International Conference on Poetry Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, following the publication of her catapoetry article in Modron Magazine, UK. Her poetry has received Pushcart Prize, Editor’s Choice Award, The Best Spiritual Literature Award, and Best of the Net nominations and was shortlisted for the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition, The Plough Poetry Prize, Ralph Angel Poetry Prize, and the Black Cat Poetry Press Nature Prize.
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