Tuesday poem #469 : Roxanna Bennett : Seven Words for Pain, Beauty, Love, Ugly

 

 

Scarlet bird feeder swings like an alarm
sacred technicians carve   now a cave  once a wall  

calls, cardinals  alizarin crimson
It was the year the poets took up painting

cadmium orange  It was the year I quit teaching art  

burnt Sienna It was the year of the Yellow Masque  
yellow ochre  It was the year I quit taking part 

Payne’s grey my father’s eyes impasto sky smears        
what  of the backyard   colourwheel away the prayer

call me liar, each life I cannot perform
nib dib inky fingers, ribs of an easel        

sparrows cluster in thickets tender hidden vibrato      
hospital poems, waiting room poems,

hum along wheelbarrows
full of Whitman & other Williams

as indistinguishable as leaves of grass
crocuses, camellias.   

Camilla’s Millarca is bloodhunting
in the courtyard again

Does the breath even need me
to breathe it or am I

being breathed

 

 

 

Gratefully residing on aboriginal land, the disabled poem-making entity known as Roxanna Bennett is the author of The Untranslatable I, Unmeaningable (Gordon Hill Press) & other works.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan