color bleeding

Evie Shockley

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.

About This Poem

“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 is the author, most recently, of semiautomatic (Wesleyan, 2017). She is Professor of English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and lives in New Jersey.

Photo Credit: Nancy Crampton

Poetry by Shockley

semiautomatic

(Wesleyan University Press, 2017)

"Muse & Drudge [why these blues come for us]" by Harryette Mullen

"Why Is the Color of Snow?" by Brenda Shaughnessy

"In Defense of Henry Box Brown" by Joshua Bennett

August Guest Editor: Ruth Ellen Kocher

Thanks to Ruth Ellen Kocher, author of Third Voice (Tupelo Press, 2016), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read a Q&A with Kocher about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year.

Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.

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August 12, 2019