No. 14 (White and Greens in Blue)
A Rothko painting tells you how to love me,
his number 14, especially. Watch the
blue move into white or brackish green; I am
abstract as the print. There are blurred, sable-stroked
boundaries everywhere, just as there is sole
one canvas to hold a rectangle of sames,
three scores of colors: indigo, hunter,
virgin, opaque, and reverie. Were you to
view me, I'd lie like this in boxes of your
stare, as a viewer finds a painting or turns
a captured object in another’s glazing
gaze. Listen, my contours are simple: Whites and
greens in blue. Taste me. I am the flavor of
tear-song, left floating. Touch my two dimensions.
You may not reach the third. I’m a painting you
must whisper to and hear, listening close to the
answers I don’t give, shellacked, trusting silence where
I'm truest, shining, meditative, and yours. A lovesick man can learn volumes from talking to women; with requite, balked hearts sing, from talking to women. As a closed door unlocks, so too love swings open when an anchor is dropped as commitment to women. In the yard of our childhoods, we played many false games with who loved who more as our girls cried to women. When a woman doubts nothing, her fears can release to such disarray appease as a poultice to women. Watch how they radiate with white pearls, in silk dresses, with their lovely loose tresses, unbound love notes to women. There their angels alight, lending moonlight to women. If the moon were their man, then his love were their light— where the heather rich fields lend bright cherish to women. Bio: Heather Fowler writes poetry, short fiction, plays for theatre, and novels. Please check out her website at http://www.heatherfowlerwrites.com/ for news of recent publications and linked-in work online.
The To Women Ghazal
Soft clean skin, longing’s sighs, whispered bed-dreams at night: