color bleeding
one year, i carried the blues around
like a baby. sure, my coffee mugs cupped
amethysts :: water gushed, rose-tinted
and -scented, from the faucets at my touch ::
the air orange with butterflies that never
left me. meanwhile, indigo held fast
to my toes :: lapis lapped my fingertips ::
and a hue the shade of mermaid scales
bolted through my hair like lightning.
my eyelids drooped, fell, heavy with sky.
that year i carried the blues around
left me mean :: while indigo held fast,
the daily news tattooed azure to my back.
true, festivals of lilies buoyed me. but what
good could white do? the blues grow like
shadows in late sun :: stretch creep run.
Copyright © 2019 by Evie Shockley. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 12, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I wrote ‘color bleeding’ during a week at the Sq**w Valley Community of Writers Poetry Workshop. As anyone who has been there knows, it is a wonderfully intense period of writing, and you become hyper-aware of everything around you, as food for poems. Pen in hand, one afternoon, I looked down at my own nails and started wondering when and why I, an avowed purple-lover, had begun to wear more and more blue. The poem began there.”
—Evie Shockley
Evie Shockley
Embracing both free verse and formal structures, Evie Shockley straddles the divide between traditional and experimental poetics.