The Peonies

They elbow their collective way past beauty—so essentially
plentiful, bullishly iterative, they encroach on the grotesque,
though beauty could be said to predict, even invite such a
movement,
always at least a little too much of a good thing. Drenched with
affect,
soaked through with a materiality that refuses to be marginalized,
this willful self-occupation, this rallied congregation,
with its leaky canopy of perfume, has no control over the assembly
and demands none, allows the sensorium to be pushed to its
nth degree,
sees exaggeration not as denial of reality but a way of displaying
one’s commitment to it: the crowd has no permits and is loath
to disperse.