red canvas
Bingerville, Cote d’Ivoire
“I was painting and blood spattered onto my canvas. A bullet had grazed a woman who was running with her child. I left the wound to say ‘never again.’”
~ Yubah Sanogo, about the 2010-2011 post-electoral crisis
I see red / in the forecast / a crimson dye spreading
across the sky / punctured by gunfire
& the hiss of smoke
I see a wound in the sky / rubricating the clouds
as the bazaar of war / saturates
my city red
I see the entrails / of dead chickens auguring
men / wet with sweat / & women
flesh drenched red
I see the penumbra / of carrion beetles underfoot
as they swim / toward the pulp
of red bodies
I see fear tunnel / into faces / through the round caves
of eyes / the reckless mouths
the red garb of the body
I see the bedlam of a red city / its burning cutbanks
its bloody corona / & the red clamour
of the rooster / on the roof
I see blue men / running / with white masks
bearing red bodies / in black tarps
I cannot unsee / these colours
this timbre of red / this rhythm of light
the canvas speaks
my paintbrush writes