Ramola D
(published in The Asian Pacific
American Journal)
If I believed this world were canvas
stretched incandescent across
the tint
and slur of earth, azure,
the rich
absurdity of apricot a stain
on lucid skies, I would
want, I think,
fruition, a flaring upward of light
at the center, a holding
of lucence clear
above the visible. Like the
corn
in Van Gogh's fields
kept from conflagration
by that steady rising, a
mere
breath above the stalks, the
ears, a brush
of gold whittled to
suspension there and yet,
withheld, a promise the
painting cannot break.
Sometimes I think we
wear ourselves
with wanting, the remnants
of our gilt
dull asbestos, dark that
settles
as dreg in the cups
of aster, gentian both
wound
and invitation. Yet this
is no
painting. We court the
blackened world
as it is, those bitter
grounds a kind
of center, a place from
which
hands begin to form: out of
the lack, out
of desire's end, a hand
that shapes
a brush from death,
pulls flesh to rawest stain
and paints the world,
paints the world again.