Kendra DeColo
after the painting by Georgia O'Keefe
Because the ocean distilled
to its follicle
is fire, you know god
must speak in texture
as much as music—a blue
so precise it wounds
the tongue, a dazzling
in the ruins of a sidewalk
where shoots ricochet up
like vernaculars of dawn.
Tonight I'm in the crowd
aching to enclose
the woman stripping off
petals of stolen light,
to touch the rim
of static around her
before nakedness
is another closing
door. If pleasure is its own
redemption, what cannot
be asked but given
into, what have I come for
if not to be touched
but unseen?
When we lived together
my sister returned
each night laced
in dregs of glitter
to study after long shifts
of letting customers buy her
drinks, never telling them
her real name. Now I understand
what keeps us whole
is the face of daylight
after hours underground, how
it meets the eye
straight on like a woman
kneeling to gather
what you've needed
to give. My sister
called herself Ruby,
blurring the space around her
like a myth. Or maybe the myth
is snow falling outside
of a club, her body
untouched by the precision
of notes wincing
in her hair, bright
as an alarm in the dusk, how I still need
to imagine her lit with silence
before rising
into another song, the color
of light escaping a body, the blue-green eye
at the center of a flame.