Daffodils
by Thomas R. Keith

  1. The Maker of Daffodils began
  2. with a trumpeter, plucked
  3. from some Tudor chapel.
  4. The head (a superfluity)
  5. lopped off, he soldered
  6. trumpet valve to neck:
  7. one seamless channel
  8. to coax a note from
  9. every exhalation.
  10. For fringe, a lace collar.
  11. He whittled away
  12. the shoulders but spared
  13. their tension to bear
  14. up the fine-spun petals.
  15. The whole amalgam
  16. he stained yellow, the brashest
  17. color in his palette,
  18. to banish any sense
  19. of decorum. Then he stuck
  20. it fast in the ground,
  21. earmarked as fanfare-maker
  22. for the king
  23. who somehow has
  24. always just left, or else
  25. is always just
  26. on the cusp of arriving.
Packingtown Review – Vol.13, Spring 2020

Thomas R. Keith is originally from Austin, TX, but now resides in Chicago. His work has appeared in Pudding Magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Old Red Kimono, among other journals. A classicist by training, he enjoys exploring the complex relationship between antiquity and modernity.

  1. Daisy Bassen
    Cocktailpoetry