causations // on red
red his tongue and red are my gums and red is the skin under my nails that he picks at and pulls down into red flags when he grabs my hand
I knit a sweater out of the lint I find tucked in the parts of me that have been tumbled dry and it is speckled with vertebra and my jaw is spun into the shoulder
he insists we go for a picnic even though it is raining red and people will stare if we go outside and soak ourselves in the red but he likes the red and he likes the way he turns my hands into straw when he holds them and picks them apart
and the straw is woven into a basket and we take the basket when we walk for our picnic
and it is red and the old woman asks what nice kids like us are doing in the red and we do not answer because my hands are straw and his mouth is open to swallow the red and it looks like his jaw is unhinged
but it’s just a trick of the light
and my basket hands are only good for carry and I carry and it is heavy because it is our picnic and I am hot because of my sweater that was once only lint that was once only my bones
and it is red because he is there and he touches my straw hands and picks them further apart and they split at the places hands split but they are woven into the basket instead of becoming digits
which means they do not bend and cannot do anything but hold
and they are soaked in red
and I am soaked in red and he tugs at my lint sweater but it snags on my straw hands and sticks to my skin in heavy red that is wet because it is red and because it is heavy and the old woman stares and he says red that he loves me red with his red gums clacking
and I drop the picnic and I drop my hands and the sweater sticks to my throat and my wrists and he says little girl and I call him red and he says I am little because it is a trick of the red and he is wrong because it is the red that makes me little and not how I look in the light
because there is no light, only red
because he is red and he licks me with red and I am only little and only a girl at the center
which is why I have the sweater
and he tries to take off the sweater in order to make me little and a girl and the old woman watches and our picnic is spoiled and the red is in my red like my esophagus and my kidneys and behind my eyes even when they are closed
which makes me heave red because there is so much red and because it is his red and not mine
and the sweater which was knit out of the lint that was carved from my pockets which were my bones before they were dry and crumbled is not soft and it is heavy because it is not soft and it is soaked with red because it is on me and I am near him and he is red
and so it sticks to my skin
and I tell him the picnic is spoiled and I tell him my sweater that was my lint that was my bones is spoiled and he likes it spoiled because he likes it red and it is the red that has spoiled it
and he likes me in the sweater red because it is heavy so I stoop to carry it and so I am small because I am stooping and because these are my bones and they are heavy when it rains red and I tell him that it is heavy and he calls me little girl
and I find a molar in the sleeve of the sweater and it fits in my gums
and the molar in my gums hides the red of my gums and so he does not see me and he keeps walking into the red that he is making and the old woman watches
and I stay behind with my straw basket hands and my lint bone sweater which is so soaked in red that I cannot peel it off
woman against the canvas // the paint brush // the body // the man
after Yves Klein
She is the blue you came here seeking / the dripping obscenity you have pressed into chaste thighs. there have been millions of immaculate conceptions since the birthcreation of the Christ-child art, but this is not one of them. this is the type of fucking that labeled mary magdelene a whore and—
when she tires of smearing across your chest you will call her and she will be blue because you loved her blue and because blue is the fingertips and heel prints and all of the places the body webs. you will love her and she will be blue because you bore her this way. pigment is imposition only so much as art is unnatural, we do not care so much about the canvas before the paint, though that too was created, that too was birth, that too hangs.
Allya Yourish has lived in two bookstores in her life and would like to live in at least a dozen more. She is a thesis student at New College of Florida, where she studies Art History and Literature. Her work has appeared in Poetica Magazine and Rising Phoenix Review. She loves floral flavored foods.