Dora M Rollins

---

 

Pre-Thanksgiving CreativeWriting Bouquet Exercise

The still-life of pungentpetals in the middle
of a painted graytable anchored to cracked
  concrete in the corner  of a desertedDeath Row
cafeteria gets ustalking  about procreation.
We listen  to a poem titled
  "Execution Date"by a man
who listens to fellow prisoners
  considering  suicide.

  There are no bees here. Just the oiled residue
 from a floral  arrangement passed through
a weapons  detector.

And three condemned men intent
on preserving the breeze
  before

  the cut.

Dora Rollins teaches creative writing in the Tucson, Arizona, state prison where her students are also writing colleagues. She serves as an Associate Editor for the 50+-year-old incarceration-focused Rain Shadow Review literary magazine. She has been published in Wordpeace, the Corvus Review, Bindwood Magazine, and Right Hand Pointing.