Holes in ROYGBIV​

Issue 16

For representing the supernatural--
the Madonna’s blue robe and shiny halo,
Christ’s white corpse and red wounds--
tempera and gold leaf work wonders.
Only oils, however, capture nature’s body.
Mere cadmium red, zinc white, cobalt blue,
and chrome yellow miraculously compound
the subtle tints of asparagus, marble, fur,
or Rembrandt’s rumpled face.
 
Love produces the like illusion of a world
fat as Manet’s oysters. But since love has gone,
I only see in watercolor, the medium
of negative space, of patches left bare
on the page, of vases painted around the glint
on their rims. It is as if light were an absence,
and absence the substrate of all things.

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Charisse Gendron is a poet living in Portland, Maine. Her work has appeared in The RavensPerch, Clepsydra, Blood & Bourbon, and other publications. 

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