Martha Collins

[from Martha Collins’s Blue Front, 2006]

keep your day bright
by thinking right

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sheets napkins bleached bread keep
your day bright by thinking pure
thought no body in it back before
bodies mouths and after all is clean
again fountains washed as snow brides
before or angels out of time who have
no bodies under if a lie intended not
to mean without words or print making
no mistake must be kept clean but color
crept into their cheeks were never free
from absent could be seen as blanched
deficient weakly colored bloodless blank
needing contrast to be seen at all against