ORANGE THINGS THAT RHYME
When I think of orange I think of cheetohs and doritos and frank ocean. Stoners galore. But moving past the soda pop orange of junk food and Penguin Classics I think of dust and spray tans and papaya and long drives—tokens of my mother. She is not a very orange woman-she is a deep blue river full of secret currents. But blue’s compliment is orange, so it is appropriate that she taught me not only of the depths of blue, but the vibrancy of orange.
*** Summer after summer we spent driving through Arizona, Utah, Colorado, California. All of this before it was glamorous, before being acquainted with the American South West, that barren wildness (orange, green) and expansive sky (blue), was a novel or noble thing in my mind. We wore bandanas over our dirty hair (yellow, brown) as we rolled out of our LL Bean tent (yellow) and into the rental van (red) and took up our positions at the windows. Mornings were spent watching the landscape speed by, stopping at Indian reservations to look at the turquoise (blue) and coral (orange) jewelry, and at gas stations for push pops (orange) and cactus cooler (orange). My dad drove through the sunny rock formations while we sat in the back, desert dust (orange) clinging to or clothes and our nostrils. “I have the best boogers!” Mom delights.
It is cool and dark in the bathroom. The walls (gray) sweat with humidity as the shower leaches more moisture into the already soggy July day. Mom gets out of the shower. Lying with my cheek to the cold tile (white) I watch her dry off. She is not methodical, but rather pats down here and there and lets other parts drip into the dry patches. Skin still slightly more than damp, she reaches for a bottle of self-tanning lotion (gold) and smears it on her legs. Not a spray tan, maybe henna based, the lotion reeks a rich bitterness that has lingered in our bathroom cabinets for years. Watching this causes some anxiety, as I worry about the lines of unrubbed lotion (cream), wondering if they will turn into streaks (orange) on her pale freckled skin. She has never taught me how to do things like this. No lessons on self grooming or beauty routines. I learn for myself, watching her haphazardly rub lotion onto her legs thinking about something magically mysterious, slightly too confident, or maybe too vain to be concerned with stripes (orange) that would peek out from under her dress (blue) later in the night.
“I don’t like orange. It used to be my favorite color. I was 8. Maybe every 8 year old likes orange. That’s how I remember it.”
this is a thing to drink if you are experiencing any kind of chill it is very orange, add whiskey or dont, i like to eat the ginger and tumeric in big spicy chunks but hey no pressure 1 ginger root 1 tumeric root 1 lemon 1 spoonful of honey 1 cup, mug, gallon hot water depending on intensity of chill 1 whiskey Mince the ginger and the tumeric, add to the vessel of choice, add spoonful of honey and lemon and let sit add whiskey pour in hot water drink yr brew!
Why’m I Orange? Is it the small bell-like blossoms of jewel weed by the creek, or how that plant will pop, launching its seed, if touched just right? Is it the delicious treat of the fruit neatly sliced and dipped in sugar that my friends and I would bring in two large bowls into their parents’ sauna for a sweet feast while we dripped sweat, dizzy with glee, but also the copious (back then, glorious) amount of weed we’d smoked? Is it summer after my senior year of high school when I worked on the farm and lived in a red house that leaned so bad it should have been condemned (but got it to myself, and so, naturally, loved it) where I’d flop down on the bare mattress and listen to Frank Ocean’s first record religiously, every night, till I fell asleep? Is it five years later, singing “Golden Lady” as Innervisions poured from my car stereo en route to visit an old friend living in his great-grandfather’s cabin, totally alone, on the Rainbow Flow― one trip to town a week: bottled water, the news, and steaks wrapped in butcher paper― a lunatic among the loons?
Is it my fingernails after they were stained by the hundreds of black walnuts I shelled by hand in the bed of Rik’s green Ranger on that rainy November day? Is it the pillow I lay my head on each night of our loop o’ the land, this driving tour of the country’s outskirts? Is it the canned peaches and peanut butter we wolf down for breakfast most mornings? Is it the striped towel Olive hung like a banner at our camp in the Pisgah, that night we shivered ourselves dry, or the tube of sunscreen we forgot to apply walking with the curlews on the stippled, white sand beaches of South Carolina? Is it the sparks Olive tells me she sees in my otherwise, cold blue eyes? Is it lichen subtly creeping up a boulder perched on canyon’s edge in the New Mexican desert that, again, Olive points out when I tell her about this poem I’m working on? Or maybe it goes further back? Perhaps my childhood adoration for Ernie from the Sesame Street, his carefree, happy-go-lucky attitude and that wonderful, never tiresome, worthy-of-wearing-out-the-tape song he sang, “Rubber Ducky, You’re the One”?
Is it Nana, back when she was gamine, spritely and auburn-haired, full of ruby peals of laughter, back before I was born, as she was as I’ve only imagined because there weren’t color photographs in her youth. Is it one-third of the Irish flag, even though my mother’s family is Catholic, and even though I’ve never been to the homeland, but still because to me―perhaps naively so―the accent sounds like truth hardwon and enduring toughness and their poems like hypnotic spells― from Laird to Heaney to the preeminent Yeats― and my childhood memory stirs with legends of Cuchulain, and, after all, my brother’s name is Fionnbhar. Then, there’s the chance it’s got nothing to do with me. It could just be temporary― some sort of cheesy fad― but, by all accounts, it seems much worse: a national embarrassment, a country-wide moral crisis, a virulent virus, and let’s not rule out mind control. What will our children call it? Trump pox? The presidential stain?
“Out of the ash/ I rise with my red [read: ORANGE] hair/And I eat men like air.” --Dame Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus”
Queen Charlie XCX as pauper Ed Sheran on LIP SYNCH BATTLE, 2018
Orange Tracks Wasn’t Me--Shaggy Sierra Leone -- Frank Ocean
M79 -- Vampire Weekend Day N Night -- Kid Kudi Last Daze of Summer -- Maleek Berry Rush -- Starah
God Only Knows -- JR JR Pyramids -- Frank Ocean Mr Lover -- Shaggy Miami -- Kali Uchis
1950 -- King Princess Home Soon -- DOPE LEMON
An orange heart feels truer in ways Than red.
At times my heart Yours And theirs Pour out deep crimson affection, emotion Unable to be expressed by any other color than The deepest, the most infinite, bloody red.
But more often it is sharper. Not of patience but One of immediacy and self indulgent want. Less thought and beauty, Inhaled, expelled. The tart citrus twinge of momentary satisfaction, The tiny kumquat explosion in the innermost layer of your Bright orange heart.
It is the hue of all of our hearts In every moment that we do not allow the Crimson to release.
My foreign friend When the walls begin to bend with drowsiness, certain blossoms in the green and orange floral print of this duvet start to look like lips and, if the mood’s just right and I ate enough dinner, they even begin to speak; that is, they read aloud, translating an email that Sleep, my foreign friend from overseas, sent me an hour ago, which, as it turns out, she signed in a romantic and verbose fashion, not atypical for her: “Most affectionately, your cherished little death.�
your Rays hits the side of my face
Orange Venezia 30. aprile, 2017 My bed is big enough only for me (minus toes) and its sheets are bright orange. The balcony is big enough only for me (standing) and its view is orange roof tops and laundry lines and warm windows. The floor is marble, so smooth that it’s soft, so cold that no socks can protect my feet. I still haven’t figured out how to turn on the boiler, so the debate is a freezing shower or a stinky first day of work. Everywhere is soft wet water and hard dry stone. 2. maggio, 2017 When I wake up, the sky is cloudless and the fishmonger is out in the campiello below my kitchen, ACDC blaring from a boom box next to his shining silver catches. I meet Emma outside her apartment at 1 pm; neither of us have working cell phones so we stick to the plans that we made on our walk home from work the night before. We get gelato and talk about traveling, our families, the terrifying international spread of fascism. Emma says it’s funny how similar we are: “I didn’t realize the same person could exist in a different country.” We look
down at our matching sneakers and jeans and laugh. She show’s me a boutique department store with wifi; the mix of cologne and texts from my mom brings tears to my eyes. We wander around the city and pick a place to draw. When we’re both fed up with our respective drawings (“This is a shit”) we search the quiet canals for our dream palazzos. “I will have my art collection here; this part can be my little apartment; yes, this is where I will park my gondola.” When we get hungry, Emma takes me to a bar along the Grand Canal, hidden at the end of a series of narrow switch-back alleys that keep the brawling tourists at bay. Our Aperol spritzes glow in the bright sunlight, making orange sun shadows on our skin. “I will be a spritz soon.” I hold mine up and look through it, the whole canal a bloody orange. 21. maggio, 2017 How different the pink and orange buildings feel on the dense level of the street compared to the rosy loftiness of my tiny balcony. 1, giugno, 2017 The wind has been near water; I can feel its weight. Lying in my tiny orange bed, I dream I am back in Florence, floating above the Duomo. The dome above the transept opens like a hinge,
and the cathedral tips into the sky, spilling its paint-splattered architect from the open rim like a drop of water from the mouth of a glass. 13. giugno, 2017 I wake up to the sounds of heavy wooden doors dragging against stones, chains clanging, shutters opening, the smells of the bakery down below mixing with the dank of the lagoon. I go to sleep to the tinging of forks being cleaned, the bantering of the waiters smoking, rolling suitcases chattering haltingly across the stones. The endless mouths and marches of the city’s visitors replace the sounds of cars that I’m used to. There aren’t enough trees here (I’ve been counting), but the wisteria creeping over the orange brick walls gives me the illusion that there must be many secret gardens. The city tempts you to imagine fantasies around every quiet, crowdless corner. Emma and I wander and window watch, from one spritz to another, waiting for our invitation.
THank you to everyone who helped make orange orange! stay tuned for *yellow*