Colorful American Sentences

after Allen Ginsburg

The afternoon sky is a righteous little terrier of a blue.

The color of companionable silence, not not saying something.

A color that is patting its pockets for something that is not there.

The sunset's colors are Whammy, Daredevil, Lips, and Double Whammy.

The sky's grays are avoiding a tough conversation, and they know it.

Pastel (Dictionary Poem)

Receiving or subject to an action without responding
or initiating an action in return.
The condition or quality of being.
The privilege of passage, entry, or acceptance —
an opening, a route, a secret word or phrase.
No longer current. Gone by. Over.
Just gone by, the time before the present.
The art or process of making such a thing.

My Body

When it rains in my body the sky is light
and the rain is loud. My body is long driveways
with RVs parked in them. My body
is sidewalk cracks filled with pine needles.
It is is perpetually under construction
which causes predictable daily traffic jams.
Hills and industry, palatial high schools
and historical churches in danger, my body
used to have a well-known aroma.
In the distance is a mountain
always there but not always visible
and sometimes I lose track of just where it should be.
On bad days the dogs
in the backyards of my body
escape to romp and are too savvy
to be lured into another backyard for safekeeping.
The most beautiful houses
are in neighborhoods I won't walk into
even with a friend. "If You Lived Here
You'd Be Home Now."
"Now Renting."
"Cash for Houses & Land, Fast."
"No Soliciting" on nearly every front door.
It has nicknames, "Destiny," and "Grit"
and "T" as in coming to one.
Sky then other mountains then trees on the water
from across the water and sometimes a day moon
in that sky interrupted
by the asymmetrical geese of my body,
or a seagull, or a great blue heron
or the crows or sometimes a single eagle
circling in my body, ready for prey.

Catie Bull's poems have appeared in journals such as FIELD, Literary Bohemian, Bellingham Review, Switched-on-Gutenberg and others, and most recently in the anthology I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State (ed. Rena Priest). She lives in Tacoma, WA and is an alum of Oberlin College and U.C. Davis.