By Jenny Xie
after Etel Adnan
And there,
between clean walls
you assume
the position,
angled toward
the red squares
roiling
on her canvases.
Into the oils
of a new tense
she herself
days before
had dissolved.
There, impasto:
her mountain.
Trimmed down
to the first
seeing.
Tamalpais
at every pitch,
pistachio
patches scraping
against cobalt.
Edges opaque
until they refused.
Mountainous,
she, too—
which is to say
surfacing,
color latching
to the seasons
where meaning
rushes.
Of this transition
the living are given
no access.
You, turning
away from
the dry wall,
where nothing
tears through.
A red square
appears in your days
yet you know
not yet where.
Jenny Xie, "Abstract with Red Square" from Poem-a-Day: December 23, 2022. Copyright © 2022 by Jenny Xie. Reprinted by permission of Jenny Xie.
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