2005 Caveat Lector Poetry Contest: First Place

How to Steal the Color Blue (1973)

Sandra Beasley

1.

Steal blue from the breath of berries.

2.

Match eye shadow to denim,
hold hair back with plastic combs.

3.

Set the sky in a dishpan,
soak it in bleach until
even flies abandon
that whitening space,
even ravens and crows
roll their eyes from green
to yellow and take refuge
along squash vines
closer to the safe earth,
admonishing toads.
Drink the runoff.
Smoke. Repeat daily.

4.

Two-thirds of a world away,
a western boy staggers
through weeds so thick
they claw against his boots.
Out of the corner of his eye
something flaps and is blue.
He remembers ribbons
he used to win back home:
thick royal folds pinned on
by the County to reward
the heifer with the most
cream, the cleanest stall.
Something is whining
at his back. Something
stings and flows across 
his ear. Then he sees red,
white, then he begins to run
so fast it feels like falling.

5.

She locks the door and leans against it.
Creases the pale telegram between her lips.
Doesn’t care when the ink stains.
Plays the Allman Brothers so loud
it drowns out anyone pounding
on the other side.

6.

Our mother refused to wear turquoise
from any boy after that one.

7.

There will be our father’s second,
third tour, taste of condensed milk
and rifle fire after all, his divorce.

There will be her migration east
to escape the stink of citrus,
her wingspan stretching and popping,
tears dried to the aftermath of salt.

The coincidence. An introduction.
A first date, I know a good Italian place.
I’ll pick you up at seven. He will drive 
a blue mustang. She will own him.