In its flaky brown envelope, a bulb carries a message. After the gray snowmelt reveals all the winter’s dog shit, this tulip is an innocent red, unlike the flags of my/? country that likes to open the veins of its+ people, unlike the neckerchiefs choking the pioneers. The roots of its petals are black as dirt, shiny as a raven’s wing, except it is stuck here. Desperate quivering stamens, sticky stigma’s waxy yellow, born and dying from the same fist. There is someone inside me, watching this tulip bloom.
Karolina Letunova grew up in Western Siberia. She has an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, AGNI, Longleaf Review, and Nurture. A 2020-2021 Zell Fellow, she has been awarded fellowships and residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Monson Arts. Currently, she lives in California where she's at work on a novel.