Site Specific
When searching for “yucca” + “diagram” very few full-detail images of yucca plants come up. Also included were plentiful diagrams of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Storage facility. How close to fault lines, water tables, underground streams, the matrix of rock.
When in bloom, the flowers open in clusters known as panicles. The flowers curl inwards during the day protecting themselves from the harsh sun. I learn about the cyclical diagrams of relationships between the plant and the moth that pollinates it —apparently only one species is tied by a delicate and cooperative thread. Mutualism.
There is a network of drift tunnels that will carry the capsules once deposited, andry-storage cask for transportation, and a waste container for burying deep within the structure. A manifold project of penetrative design.
Precarity bounds both projects perched on shifting strata and casting threads.
At night:
mutually assured
nightbloomer
blooming the night away
The flowers curl outwards projecting scent and stigma lobes for the yucca moth to pollinate. Approaching the stigmatic orifice, she lays eggs in an uninhabited bloom and then seals the capsule with pollen—thus pollinating the plant and providing food for her offspring. The cycle continues in such a way as long as both exist.
BRITA SAUER is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at NMSU and Assistant Poetry Editor for Puerto del Sol. Read more.