Fe
Fe
Blood stone,
match borne red.
The color of berries and rust.
The color of words under a pink tongue -
paprika and the last loosened garnets of sun - so red
is how the day is spent.
The remainder of light, the reminder of love.
The lees of a cauldron and the climb of mercury when
it is hot enough to poach eggs on sidewalks
and boil anything with a lidless gaze.
Red: a line, a torso twisting up through
canopies of lesser trees, tip of a lit cigarette,
coils below a fire.
Red might mean death,
definitely desire.
Banked, burrowed deep into the rete of nerves,
flashing as you try not to look.
Streamers from ignited calcium,
flares that seem indelible – but fade before
rescue arrives.
Implying heat, hinting at spiced sweetness,
a serrated knife,
an unspooled thread, easy to follow.
Red.
Red is your Scorpio hue,
your back-beat,
your high-hat snap, the polish of this apple that
you eat to its core.
As red as the feathered arrow,
as the bull's eye,
as those shadows we walked through
one late July, forcing ourselves to
avoid talking aloud,
our ears filled with each other's heart-flam-tap
and midnight's moonless red.
