What Color
- What Color
poetry, Elizabeth O'Brien
You fuss in the hospitalbed one vein sharpcross your foreheadis a rillI watchas theypump tubesdown your throatand upyour nose.When last weekyou dyed your corncob hairyou stippled the towelsthe porcelain you frescoedthe bowls of your ears Iwish you hadn'tdone it.Colorstill outlines the bedsof your thumbnails, Christwhat colorreally isblue? Azure aqua tealcyan turquoise wet sapphirerobin's egg lapis cobalt curaçao airmoleculesthey fill you withcharcoal.As if they canstuff you with firelike this. [End Page 557]
elizabeth o'brien lives in Minneapolis, MN, where she earned an MFA in Poetry at the University of Minnesota. Her work — poetry and prose — has appeared in many journals, including New England Review, Rumpus, Diagram, Sixth Finch, Radar Poetry, PANK, Cicada, and the Ploughshares blog. Her chapbook, A Secret History of World Wide Outage, is forthcoming from Diode Editions. Twice nominated for a National Book Award
