“My Lover Sends Me Bulbs I Keep in the Basement” by Mary Dean Lee

Photo Credit: Andrea Boudrias

The stark silver maple stretches high above the other trees and spreads over rooftops out my window, pale orange sky behind. All the cars in the driveways are covered with heavy frost. I go down to plant a red amaryllis, ripping open the plastic bag of black dirt in the box when I can’t get the knot out, letting the water from the spigot run in, mushing it around to moisten uniformly, dump half in the skimpy green pot, plop down on top the bulb with shoots paunching out already, and gingerly pour in the remaining damp soil, pressing and poking, fingers all around the sides. Cleaning off my hands after, I catch a glimpse, a woman in a mirror, looking like she feels hungry again.

Artist’s Statement

I write poems to discover and express, to unravel and undress. To taste, and let my tongue linger a little longer. I am drawn to poke around, stir up, tease apart, fiddle with things that clash, jar, and jangle. I like putting words together to capture an intense emotion, insight, a moment of joy, despair, or confusion on seeing, hearing, embracing life's beat and bounce. My thrill is a quiet place outside my window, underneath the redbud towering over the fading forsythia. There I am, and every line I write, I am tossing a curly lock to the world.

Mary Dean Lee’s debut collection Tidal was published April 2024 by Pine Row Press and was shortlisted for the Quebec Writers’ Federation 2024 A. M. Klein Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2021, The Fiddlehead, Hamilton Stone Review, Ploughshares, MicroLit. She grew up in Milledgeville, Georgia, studied theatre and literature at Duke University and Eckerd College, and received her PhD in organizational behavior at Yale before moving to Montreal to teach at McGill University.