Sunflowers
A poem by Joanne Durham

Sunflowers

My father planted sunflowers
between crabgrass and clover
outside of our apartment. I waited,
not expecting much
but soon their stems sputtered
through stubborn ground,
sudden yellow faces bounded roofward,
peered in my bedroom window,
bobbing heads too heavy
for their scraggly stalks, propelled,
in all their awkwardness,
to wriggle towards the sun.
My friend’s front yard was framed
in flowerbeds, rose bushes artfully
mulched and pruned,
but they were someone else’s
story. The sunflowers
were mine.

About the Author:

Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press 2022) and On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay 2023). Her poems appear in many journals and anthologies. She was the 2023 winner of the Third Wednesday Annual Poetry Contest and the Mary Ruffin Poole Award. She lives on the North Carolina coast, with the ocean as her backyard and muse. https://www.joannedurham.com/.

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