Red and yellow.
New Mexico, and the
Zia and the tension
and the poverty.
Texans in fringe.
“I made that festival,” she says.
Red and yellow.
New Mexico.
Shave ice cylinders.
Layered up, sugar, water,
colors of the rainbow.
Bubble gum, blue raspberry,
Tiger Blood and banana.
What color is plutonium?
Can you isolate the isotope?
So we all turn red and yellow
before going fallow
as the birdsong ends.
The last drag before the drop
into a half drunk beer. The hiss.
No more music. It stopped.
Long ago.
A flash of white.
Like the sun off tents
at an art fair.
Homemade, self-made,
credit or cash. Cover the fee.
Pull it together to keep
up the act.
Ferni knew, Robbie too.
The porkpie a ruse
to keep a casted shadow
across the eyes of the last
to know it all.
Blistering sun. Metalwork,
glass, wood and ingenuity.
Split the atom and
split the profit.
Intended as lesson, as warning
ultimately permission granted.
Red and yellow.
The four directions.
New Mexico.
Comments 4
I really like this Dan. Two thumbs up!
Author
Thanks Jon!
i have read this poem dozens of times. had to let it digest some before commenting.
despair with tinges of hope – just enough so the despair doesn’t turn hopeless. i looked up the color of plutonium. the question was asked. i wondered, “is it not silver?” one oxide of pu is yellow. atomic energy. its ultimate purpose. what is the color (pretext, facade, excuse for) of plutonium? looked up the zia. the symbol. four of four. the appropriation of it and the land. fallow – dormancy – reddish yellow color. texans in fringe. i was born and live in houston. my wife and i have been looking at nm as a place to live for about 4 years now.
so much more. maybe i’m reading too much into it. maybe not enough.
a 10,000+ word essay in much less. impressive. still haven’t digested it all.
Author
If I had to pick a color it would be yellow. As in “yellow cake,” used to power the great flash. Oddly enough, this is also a very integral color here in New Mexico