The Flamboyán Tree c. 1933

           after the painting by Juan Antonio Rosado

A man walks beneath me dressed in knickers, 
he labors below. Pushing his wheelbarrow. 

It is full, with dead parts of me. 
Call them flowers. 

Splayed for all to mourn. Stamen, anther, 
filament. Each morning I become less—

Pistil, stigma, style.
I am Flamboyán. My petals stain 

walkways, the color of blood.
In this picture, the artist hides my shame. 

Allows everyone to see the knickered 
man with his wheelbarrow but he conceals 

what’s inside it. Those dead parts of me.
What is lost. The artist paints me 

heavy with flowers, the color of burning
flame. Behind the large white home, 

two brick columns and me caged 
behind a fence, I drop another 

flower. Like a bird whose lost 
its wing feathers

in a tremendous molt, renders it shaken. 
Bald. Here, in this land of sunshine, 

the rotating winds begin
their wrath. Like the cold fingernails

of winter, they will come for me. I turn   
colors in the shiver of my own thoughts.

ROXANNE CARDONA

Roxanne Cardona was born in New York of Puerto Rican heritage. She was a school principal in the Bronx. Her first book, Caught in the Principal's Lens, will be published this summer by Pine Row Press. Her work has been published in One Art, Connecticut River Review, Pine Hills Review, Mason Street, San Antonio Review, Rise Up Review, Commuter Lit, and elsewhere.