Two Poems by Joan Colby

In Merida

Scum crusts the hotel swimming pool.
Businessmen drink coffee in the square.
Red flowers mass in the atrium.
A woman weeps at the shrine
Of Christ of the Blisters. Every night
Bats fly in through open shutters.

Businessmen drink coffee in the square.
The sun draws patterns on the stones
Of the shrine of Christ of the Blisters.
Red flowers mass in terra cotta pots
In the atrium where every night
Bats fly in through open shutters.

A woman weeps at the shrine
Holding a child in her thin arms.
Businessmen drink coffee in the square.
In the atrium, red flowers mass
Like exploded blisters. In Merida
Scum crusts the hotel swimming pool.

At the shrine of Christ of the Blisters
Petitioners arrive bearing red flowers.
The sun draws patterns on the stones.
Businessmen drink coffee in the square
Scum crusts the hotel swimming pool.
Every night bats fly in through open shutters.

On Art

If you want art
Nail that tree to the wall
Insist its skeleton

Redefine the ways a tree might extend itself.
Art is not sprawl.
Not trees anywhichway

Mauling a floating blue woman
Who will never consent. Not trees
In greedy subterranean

And serpentine excesses.
Nail it
To the garden wall the way a poet

Hammers the words
Espaliering language
To the page.

Nail it
Until it shrieks
Silently in your eyes

Making you feel
How it feels.

Joan Colby