“These Colors Never Run”
bumper sticker with flag decal
Red runs
First. Rain and sun
On streaks of blood: faces
Paling with fear that erases
Each one.
The square
Of blue then wears
Thin through its holes of stars—
Abandoned fortress that Lord Mars
Forswears.
A plain
Flat white remains:
A flag for rendering
A truce with sun, surrendering
To rain.
Blue Because No Red (or Blue)
January 31, 2018
Thirty-five years now lie between
This and next time. He could have seen
A super blue moon that’s also red
(Making it purple, he would’ve said),
The second full moon this January
That’s circled close enough to bury
Itself in our shadow. But it’s obscured
By clouds. So often he’s endured
This rainy curtain ringing down
All over every Northwest town
Before he can applaud such a sight.
In most of the nation, a clear night
Reveals a globe of blood—as though Mars
Draws near to see if it has more scars
Than our air-and-water-shrouded rock.
According to the Doomsday Clock,
Whose dial should be dark red like this,
In two minutes, Earth could enter Dis:
A finger’s touch release more light
Than myriad suns and put to flight
The densest cloak of clouds. He hails
The return of a moon whose face is pale.
Michael Spence’s work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, The Carolina Quarterly, The Hudson Review, North American Review, Rattle, The Sextant Review, and Tar River Poetry. His fifth book, Umbilical (St. Augustine’s Press, 2016), won the New Criterion Poetry Prize.
Header photo by , courtesy Shutterstock.
