Untitled

I turned my back on the color fields.  I turned my back
on the abstract, New York, the blue/red adjustments
and the inflamed men, the men inflated with trust
and acts of god and gorgeous manly man drag.
I turned my back on the furious magazines [I could
read], their reds and blues and frequencies I used
[I could use] to spin myself into an ecstasy, white
dervish, in custody of a story that begins troubled
with power, then the trouble is you as you spin,
a dance that ends with what kind of man I am.

Copyright © 2019 by Bruce Smith. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 12, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.