Vegetal Energy

Blaise

“the kitchen twists dark on its spine

and I taste in my natural appetite

the bond of live things everywhere”

— Lucille Clifton, ‘cutting greens’

Fibrous, glaucous-green folds
Protrude in blotches, blurry tufts
Something swells through its layers
A vegetative cloud, ruffling its scales 

It’s quizzical, this splurge – 
The growth of an artichoke 
Emanating from and through
That hovering, half-here child
With its hushed, all-seeing eyes

Its membranes mirror thistle-knots
Rooting out to root back in 
Underpinned by a twisting, a slosh–
An eel being boiled alive
Splattering above and against 
The pan’s semi-sturdy rim 

Blend backwards down the spine
Drizzle through its purple hue 
Its vital, central fold
Retrieve the tang of bitter-wood
The trickling splits of flavour 
An oscillating whirlpool of spit

Don’t resist. Lean into its multi-creviced
Mammal of a tongue. Inhale its fuzziness,
Its invisible needles – as fingers fiddle 
Through the dank complexity of scalp
And hair – as spews converge with spurts. 
Its inflorescence shudders in the half-light.
Plugged within its pudgy core 
Something grows

As naturally as an alien

The Science

This poem was originally inspired by ‘fractals’, repeated patterns in nature. I wanted to compare the layers of a human brain and an artichoke. Both seem static, but are imbued with an energy that animates them to live and grow. I took inspiration from the biological model of the ‘tree of life’ to describe evolution: instead of a linear trajectory, we see a multiplicity of branches and connections. This sharing of DNA between organisms made me want to probe deeper into the dichotomy of the ‘natural’ and the ‘alien’.

The Poet

Blaise is currently studying a PhD at the University of Leeds that explores the links between contemporary models of cognition and ecocritical thought in the contemporary novel. Before this, she completed an M.A. in Medical Humanities at the University of York, and a B.A. in English at King's College London. She is inspired by the intertwinements between literature and science and how interdisciplinary studies can promote new ways of seeing and thinking. Her poetry often draws on the natural world and more-than-human phenomena.

Next poem: ( Mammatus ) by Sarah Doyle