PAPAVER SOMNIFERUM

commonly known as the opium poppy, or breadseed poppy

2018
Sun Yung Shin

You and you and you are the last white tyger in these tall black grasses 

We pass from one dreamer to the next 

Even a colony of one

In a white poppy field 

Bury it all to keep Tyger alive

The cat-blue blood

The red day buys its stripes from the night

Everything grows in this purple field

Roots of metal and roots of pine

Tyger pays no royal mind

To your Eden

Now you eat the gods’ signal

Where time waits in a cave

100 days and a reversal

Our animal serial  

An encampment of sleep

Coiled, bud like a fist

Or an eye, white and glossy

A pale Tyger in every flower

A future in every fire