consonants

[symptomatic of exposure to a poem on a shorter list of letters, assigned as treatment in an innovative kind of therapeutic session. sadly, this medium does not do justice to the preferred format of the exercise.

update: soon to be published in PRISM.]

B orange C, D umber F,
G beige H, J maroon K,
L chartreuse M,
N silver P,
Q indigo R, S blush T, V sepia W,
X loden Y,
Z puce: consonants,
I read your harsh truths in clusters:
B, crisp orange roots, flashes that feed hungry eyes
and C, violent fog and flame,

mine eye’s destruction; D, broad-breasted Earth yawning her mouth,
longing, while F idly dances, polished shoes, pressed slacks;
G, genteel, four-credit courses and handshakes,
wearing H argyles and pinstripes: her world.

J, leather-bound books filled with old laurels, honey-sweet kisses,
mulberry stains; K the axe awaiting purple descent
upon L, the seat intolerably colored
designed by snickering M: how she knows him.

N gray as Syracuse in autumn,
P pale as the old soldier’s beard,
Q speaking antique tongues to knaves,
R, velvet-clad, star-crossed, slave;

S sunset scene: she speaks softly, sacred.
T the touch trembling, tender,
V a voice victorious
W soon wavers: It whispers
“why are we at war?”
X pushing our language to its crisis, because
Y “you wore a different green before.”

Z recalls to me
the color common to everybody.

(She told me:
the lady novelist wrote
“every body.”)

I remember them after the longest crimson hour,
clustered close on burnt earth,
or in plastic, number-lettered,
nameless,
and the helicopters were as guttural as Goethe,
consonants robbed of color,
blacker than the blood they carried.