Alex Tretbar's poem "Floristry" has been paired with a white duchess satin sheath dress featuring digitally printed and deliberately blurred floral imagery from Jonathan Anderson's autumn/winter 2023-24 collection for LOEWE. "I was fascinated about the psychology of how we ultimately see things online," writes Anderson. "The blurry aspect in motion looks like a glitch. It's out of focus." In Tretbar's poem, a single gesture of sharing a wifi password leads to a ripple effect across Portland's homeless population, granting a marginalized collective instant connectivity. Three words in particular stand out: "homeless," "wireless," and "access." The poem also asks: What is a "commerce of flowers?" One could say the answer to Tretbar's poem's question is also its title, but I think it's more complicated than that. Which is why I love this poem so much. The poem is both a catalog of "symptoms" and an inquiry into "cure." The concept of floristry itself is a question of cultivation.
— Paul Cunningham, Editor
Floristry
An employee of a dispensary on the east side had shared the
business’s Xfinity password with a friend, who had then shared
it with a friend of a friend, and now all of Portland’s homeless
population had wireless high-bandwidth internet access. Bus
routes, pornography, how do you know if you have endocarditis,
Facebook, what are the symptoms of endocarditis, video games,
fan fiction, Gmail, Multnomah County jail roster, Oregon inmate
search, CVS hours, Motel 6, temperature, REI, justice center,
cure for endocarditis, the word for the commerce of flowers.
Alex Tretbar is a Midwestern writer and teacher. He is the author of the chapbooks toofarwandered (Tilted House), According to the Plat Thereof (Ethel), and Kansas City Gothic (Broken Sleep). His novella-poem Dogsmind is forthcoming from Dead Mall Press this fall. Alongside students, alumni, and faculty from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, he teaches creative writing at Chillicothe Correctional Center, a women's prison in Missouri.
Floristry
An employee of a dispensary on the east side had shared the
business’s Xfinity password with a friend, who had then shared
it with a friend of a friend, and now all of Portland’s homeless
population had wireless high-bandwidth internet access. Bus
routes, pornography, how do you know if you have endocarditis,
Facebook, what are the symptoms of endocarditis, video games,
fan fiction, Gmail, Multnomah County jail roster, Oregon inmate
search, CVS hours, Motel 6, temperature, REI, justice center,
cure for endocarditis, the word for the commerce of flowers.
Alex Tretbar is a Midwestern writer and teacher. He is the author of the chapbooks toofarwandered (Tilted House), According to the Plat Thereof (Ethel), and Kansas City Gothic (Broken Sleep). His novella-poem Dogsmind is forthcoming from Dead Mall Press this fall. Alongside students, alumni, and faculty from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, he teaches creative writing at Chillicothe Correctional Center, a women's prison in Missouri.
