.
Group Portrait
.
In a mixed bouquet
some die first.
.
The most distinctive
petals slump
.
before the standards.
The attention
.
demanding, astounding
sunflower shuts
.
its questing eye. Next
the trash takes
.
a pale tuberose, wadded
like discarded paper.
.
Bright amiable mums
serviceable
.
carnations —
perennial survivors
.
frame a missing
central focus
.
as an end game
in nostalgia.
.
Perished
is the beauty
.
of how
they stood together.
.
A native of Florida, Chris Bullard lives in Philadelphia. He received his B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from Wilkes University. Grey Book Press published Continued, a poetry chapbook, in 2020 and Moonstone Press recently published Going Peaceably to the Obsidian Knife, his chapbook of environmentally themed poetry. Main Street Rag expects to publish his poetry chapbook, Florida Man, early next year.
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North of Oxford 