Nels Hanson
Flowers at Night
The gifted die disappointed, sad
their planted garden didn't fully
bloom, perfume the air and change
the scent of blood and pain to
rosemary, or elysium, that future
flower the dying hand reaches out
to grasp as night comes on. Then
the wise finally understand those
petals open only in the dark, by
a foreign sun. The moon is cool
and silver, devoid of heat, absolute
zero as atoms freeze and cease
to move and the mind plays God,
animates the dormant seeds into vast
beds of sudden and exploding stars.
Bio
Nels Hanson has worked as a farmer, teacher, and contract writer/ editor. He graduated from UC Santa Cruz and the U of Montana and his fiction received the San Francisco Foundation's James D. Phelan Award. His stories have appeared in Antioch Review, Texas Review, Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, Montreal Review, and other journals. "Now the River's in You", which appeared in Ruminate Magazine, was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart Prize, and "No One Can Find Us", published in Ray's Road Review, has been nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prizes. Poems have appeared in Poetry Porch, Atticus Review, Red Booth Review, Meadowlands Review, Emerge Literary Review, Jellyfish Whispers, and other magazines