The quality of a color’s purity
Snow dumps from the clouds to add
insult to isolation. This rural Wisconsin apparently
not yet white enough. I’ve given permission
for your post to appear on my
wall, the background of which is white.
My blood leaks a white spill, mingles
with my toothpaste bordering at the drain.
I’ll lose a white tooth in there
one day: too many brown beverages: coffee,
tea, acids and bases that claw without
racial preference at my pink gums. There
is this old man in the mirror
now who recalls his misplaced childhood in
the joy and simplicity of border greetings:
¡Oralé! ¿Que tal, guey? His white blood
cells shrink away from the red ones
and the tinge of their half-brown chromosomes.
Chroma – chromatic purity; freedom from dilution
with white and hence vivid in hue.
I am another boring sunset, brilliant and
muted; striated hues—maimed by lackluster.
***
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