Kolbe Riney
textures
when I see my life as a woman
in texture,
I see
the color of my body—
magenta last night;
this plastic container you brought
filled with gifts that go:
peach, peach, cake, peach,
the juice runs coral down my face
like rivulets down the hearts
of sluice boxes;
her strands of hair on the pillow,
the venation so overlapping
I think of corn mazes
in October;
this taste of wine and chocolate
together, unfolding
like dark reams of velvet,
which I imagined as a child
sweet and summer
but in reality,
bitter and grain;
these chains
as I staple
paper wishes to a tree
for winter;
these hands, brown and digging,
digging into the earth,
these tender filaments of roots
spread wide like eyelashes,
and the leather leaves
like the ear of cattle
or maybe its tongue;
and at last,
coffee grounds when the pot is empty,
and its mirror,
my own blood
at the bottom.
About the writer:
Kolbe Riney is a queer poet and student based out of Tucson, Arizona. Her work appears in the West Trestle Review and Persona Magazine, and is forthcoming in Camas Magazine, the West Trade Review, and Panoplyzine.
Image: Kill the Lights by Matthew Hindley (1974- ). Acrylic and oil on canvas. 210 x 300 cm. 2009. Public domain. Matthew Hindley graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2002, where he was awarded the Michaelis Prize.
