Small Talk
after Faith Ringgold’s ‘Windows of the Wedding #7: Small Talk’
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We talk in triangles
of colour – how your hope
for a clear blue sky is
congruent with my wish
to wear an orange dress.
We erect a tent of
grass and river and stitch
into diamonds the slant
facets of every day.
How harlequin we are.
Is this dress light or burnt
orange? Your waistcoat sage
or green? Conversations
of leaves and berries, half
murmured translations of
streams, mossy banks. Snippets
of repeating patterns.
From the west, a cloud of
silence needles towards
fault lines of fire, scrub and
desert where lit and burnt
orange reconcile in
parallels of meaning.
My blue touches the veins
on your wrist. Your blue swaps
to a masculine end.
Talk is gesture made strange.
Sun sets behind the trees,
shadows mouth wounds, acid
words become alkaline,
become neutralised. A
blood moon and dusk is the
quiet of doves roosting.
How was your day? Echoes
from mountains we have scaled
and descended. Discourse
reaches iced peaks, green troughs,
responds with a mirror
image. Prayer flares into
passion. Silence signs peace.
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Life
after Faith Ringgold’s ‘Windows of the Wedding #9: Life’
✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽
Amniotic blue, black velvet
origami purse, skin thin as
a beige (mothballed) stocking, piglet
suckling milk-come-in blues, has
one green eye on the unsucked teat,
sore nipples and the four-hour nights,
dark days drip like cooling, weak tea,
bipolar line, dividing stripe
that strips roses from the whey-faced,
then one day the smell of cut grass,
the sky is sharp with diamonds,
crawling, wobbling, this too shall pass,
eyes are bloodshot and circled black,
drawn face made up in the dark,
let the blue light seep through the crack
in the curtains with coffee marks,
the little fist balls up pure puce,
new as a grass blade breaking through
to claim its right to the green juice
of spring before the insect zoo
swarms, toffee dreams of sugared sleep
stick like molasses until rain
pitter-patters, storm ditches creep
with a smudge of mosquitoes, strains
of flesh-toned lullabies, jaded
jazz, and all that, valentine tat
bin-bagged, sensible soles, faded
memories of dusk before that
changeling hour, candles, fireworks,
view from the hill, lake spread below,
lure of carmine lips, midnight perks
lido backstrokes to libido,
floating at night, a moonless sky,
baby, say baby, skin-to-skin,
love, say love, salad days, cry
a river, dark womb, light gets in,
echoes turn into an image
on a screen, waves bounce back from bone,
relic found on a pilgrimage,
life, say new life, black, blue, atone.
✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽
Lisa Kelly's first collection, 'A Map Towards Fluency' was published in 2019 by Carcanet. Her latest pamphlet, 'From the IKEA Back Catalogue', is available from New Walk Editions. She is currently co-editing, 'What Meets the Eye', an anthology of poetry and short fiction by UK Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing writers.
