Red is the Color of my True Love’s Hair

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

The thing you do not have is dark red hair.

If you had that, I’d let you crawl across

My chest and stomach to my moving pair

Of manliness and take in you the gloss

And stench of seed, but you do not have red

Or orangey curls to tempt my legs, those two

With thighs and knees to lurch and need to spread.

I dream of citrus trees that no one drew

Except Surrealists in nightmare groves

Where no moons ever sobbed because of chains,

Though Salvador stuffed art with heat like cloves

For advertising made from Spanish stains.

  My canvass has been rolled and stuffed away

    Because you failed me, left my thrusting gray.

~ Phillip Whidden