after Stephen Duck
The Lord is a painter.
Already he’s retired certain colors—
set them aside to crumble
like the amusement park
on the edge of town,
gathering thistles.
But we still have green
in its many forms—
on lawns and boulevards,
under the noontime sun.
How I love lunch in the summer—
how good it feels to be allowed,
by law, to experience opulence:
sitting back in your car
in the Burger King parking lot,
food laid on your dashboard,
you become like a thresher
beneath a shady tree
three hundred years ago, scythe
nowhere in sight. Or, eating
a Caesar salad you enjoy
the cool feeling of the porcelain plate
against your wrist and fingertips
as you graze it on the table.
Then it warms from your touch
and turns the temperature
of everything else.
Christopher Blackman is a poet from Columbus, Ohio. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, DIAGRAM, Cleaver Magazine, Southeast Review, Sixth Finch, and Baltimore Review, among other publications. He received his MFA from Columbia University, and is an instructor for the Kenyon Review Young Writers’ Workshop. His debut book of poems, Three-day Weekend, won Gunpowder Press’ Dryden-Vreeland Book Prize, and is forthcoming in 2024. He currently lives outside of Boston.
Header Art: “Gamma(γ)#93,” Paul Blenkhorn