What it's not

Three poems after Spatial Concept by Lucio Fontana

I

You could stick your hand straight through it
if you were allowed, the blue,

the black behind that’s not no color or a color,
having to do with light:

rips in the hem of a pair of jeans
of a bored man with an army knife,

six skinny wings of the blue birds
he hit with his slingshot.


II

What it’s got is something scratchy,
canvas in the sense that means rough
like irritated skin painted over blue
stitched up and worth the operation
billowing up in cold blood bulging the surface.

Where it hurts is at its point of meeting
between spaces that aren’t sky or water
that are never ever sky or water.



III

The day I saw a mangled body on TV
and rushed back to you to smooth out your face,
bothered that the scratch on your shoulder
would tear you open to a bunch of shreds,
you put down your book, motions safe
as a screen door, a bowl of rice.
That blue canvas? you ask
This isn’t it.