by Mary Meriam

You didn’t tell me it was all about the red
ball of the sun, the sucking sky, the doubting orange.

Why am I camping in these woods? O flaming yellow
am I, a fire in my dress of girl-scout green.

The party wild, the artists high, the music blue,
you turn to me, a stranger out of indigo.

You take me to your studio’s seductive violet
sofa, make love to me until I shout in violet.

So how could I have known I’d lose the indigo
last night? Kiss me now without a doubt in blue.

We live together in a house of sheaves of green,
sweet-scented flower fields around us sprouting yellow.

Fridays I bring you marigolds and peel your orange.
Hurry, my horse’s racing heart is stout and red.

Mary Meriam’s first collection, Conjuring My Leafy Muse, was nominated for the 2015 Poets’ Prize. Her second collection, Girlie Calendar, was selected for the 2016 American Library Association Over the Rainbow List. Her poems have appeared in 12 anthologies, including Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters (Penguin Random House, 2015). Poems are published or forthcoming in Literary Imagination, Adrienne, Cimarron Review, Rattle, The New York Times, The Women’s Review of Books, and Prelude.