(after Mark Rothko)
Alive, falling zero to the bone.
I feel the zipper’s delicate weight,
minute technology of spurs
that separates and joins,
separates and joins.
Like the possibility of a wall’s
cruel beauty I am nourished,
hindered, made aware of the
tastelessness of what ‘may never happen.’
Red, white, exposed, it is only,
after all, a mild tragedy,
but unzipped unstayed unbuttoned
it is a monumental void.