MY FATHER'S ROSES

I'm annoyed,

passing my father's roses

every day

as I walk to work—

flagrant colors, clamoring

years past his death,

outside his old office

on York.

How I hated

how attentive

he was to them,

lacing their stems

with pesticides,

reciting the names

of every damn one,

clipping their skinny necks,

manicured fingers

tenderly placing each

in its own vase,

never minding their thorns.

Laura Davies Foley's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Georgetown Review, Inquiring Mind, Newport Review, The Distillery, Sierra Nevada Review, California Quarterly, Inkwell, Bloodroot Literary Review, and others, as well as in anthologies: In the Arms of Words: Poems for Disaster Relief and The Still Puddle Poets. She has written three collections of poetry: Syringa (Star Meadow Press), Mapping the Fourth Dimension (Harbor Mountain Press), and The Glass Tree, which was selected as a finalist for the Philip Levine Poetry Book Award and will be published by Harbor Mountain Press.