Crimson
—“Darkening Red”
a painting by Mark Rothko
To explain crimson,
the grotesque danger,
the acute beauty
and commotion of it,
how it commands recollection,
even after every trace
is vanished, I describe
our small faces
smeared crimson
sweet and sour cherry pits
stacked in front of us
like small cannonballs
the first stain gleaming
inside my teenage thighs,
seen down below
through new breasts,
my cousin’s cheek
after the rake hit
the bony part near her eye
forming a fork-shaped wound,
or at the butcher’s shop,
watching as his thick fingers
kept streaking
his long white apron.
I know there is no forgetting.
Years after my butterflied chest
(the surgeon’s cache) is splayed
under a blaze of lights, I relive red
nightmares that darken
long after the scar that ropes my ribs
turns silvery,
like birch.
by Jim Culleny
from Alehouse 2011
Painting by Mark Rothko