Reds
- Reds
after Mark Rothko Terror is what happens when red 0multiplies. The way a drop of red clouds water in a vase. Before there was you there was blood. Her heart beating inside your body, the low, dark hum of her voice widening beyond sound. You were never almost alive. Your heart started in a dark field. Her blood and warmth grew loud. Time was with you. “Rest, friend,” said Time, “I will never leave you. I hear what you hear. Safety is darkness.” But then time broke. You could not hear her heart. You were with you wandering into brightness, opening. [End Page 67]
Caley O’Dwyer’s poems in the Rothko series appeared as part of the Tate Modern Museum in London’s Mark Rothko Retrospective (2009), and are published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Burnside Review, Tuesday, Ekphrasis, and others. He is a winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize. His first book of poems, Full Nova, is available on Orchises Press.
