Red: The Color that Advances

When you try to make a point, they always say
who are we to judge? as if it weren’t
a question but a fact that everything in the world’s
of equal value. But the brain is built to compare
and can’t see red unless there’s a green nearby,
can’t know comfort without some painful contrast.
Cezanne intuitively knew how the brain sees red,
knew the eye was his touch extended,
that a green cloth and blue salver made
the apple red, that it takes two colors
to make a parade or procession.
In a bowl of painted fruit,
red is the color that advances.

To make your portrait, some painter gloved
and masked must grind pigments
or buy poisons: the arsenic sulfide that apes
cinnabar and smells like almonds in your hair
or boil quicklime and sulfur
in an alembic glass. He will ask me
if your cheeks are cherry red
like carbon monoxide, and I will answer,
there’s no red without risk, thinking of
the coal tar in your carmined lips, feeling it
own the heat of its making, just like love:
in a bowl of painted fruit,
red is the color that advances.

“Red: The Color that Advances,” a sample poem from The Color that Advances, by Michael Salcman.

Chapbook, poetry.
34 pages, 16 new poems
Saddle stitch binding
Acid-free paper throughout
ISBN 0-9727455-2-1

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