New Colors

by Andrew Rogers

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My mother is in my belly.

By that I mean—

​

I talked to the late Grandpa Holmes one night

by the Willamette River tripping acid

while Jacob’s knees buckled under PBR

and molly on the wet stones.

By that I mean—

​

Anna’s off in France

which is a place I can’t be sure exists because

I’ve never been there.

By that I mean—

​

Janet still wants to die every day

and one day she will win

so I can’t touch this world full-on enough to call it home

but I will keep crashing here.

                                             By that I mean—

​

Life is a gentle explosion. Sometimes I meet people

and our conversations drip down my chin

like overripe apricots

so I keep exploding gently

little by little every day.

​

When I was a kid my greatest talent was zoning out

into two adjacent mirrors and slipping into glass fractals of

my head and my nose and my eye...

I used to get down in the grass

and smell the dirt so up there in my nose like

                    I don’t think I live up to that now.

​

I keep counting all the little beauties though.

Each stain on a plate. Each butt in the gutter.

They all had lips on them, you know.

Sometimes two or three.

I wonder how they knew each other.

I wonder if they talked shop or swapped jokes

or made deals about a coastal trip in June.

​

Can I swallow all of life?

            How much will there be?

            There’s all these new colors in my belly.

I can’t see in there though.

​

Anna—

              are you in love out there?

              Is the wine really better?

              Do footsteps sound the same?

​

Janet—

              aren’t you glad you met me?

              Who gobbles candy in coffins?

              Do you walk by cold stony bodies of water

              and name them after yourself in your mind?

​

I think I said to Grandpa Holmes—not in words but in telepathy—

              I only knew you through the mouth of my mother

              and she loved you like a cactus loves its flower

              so stay with me a little longer til the peak dissolves.

​

What swallowed up Jacob that night by the river?

              (He’s okay now. I hear he’s a park ranger in Washington

              and has a beautiful kitchen.)

​

I think I swallowed my mother; she is in my belly.

There’s all sorts of new colors in there I can’t see.

​

I am waiting for my water to break.