This week’s poem is a vivid meditation on red. With its short lines and lack of capital letters, Jeri Theriault’s “reaping” has an associative momentum that feels much like how we move through thoughts and images in our heads. Here, the speaker’s reflection takes her through a whole arc of different reds, with a particular interest in what these reds mean for women. Be sure to read the epigraph at the top, about the startling source of a certain red.

Theriault has three chapbooks, the latest of which, “In the Museum of Surrender,” won the 2013 Encircle chapbook contest. Her full-length collection “Radost, My Red,” was released in 2016 by Moon Pie Press.

Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are now open. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, indigenous writers and other underrepresented voices. Find the link to submit in the credits below.

reaping

By Jeri Theriault

Cochineal, a red dyestuff consisting of the dried, pulverized bodies of certain female scale insects, continues to be used as a coloring agent in cosmetics. (Miriam Webster)

you learn red early—

sunlight pressing eyelids

picture-book apple

your mother’s mouth

heart-shaped

moving toward you.

you love red

even when your womb

un-valves what it cannot

use & stains

your sleep.

you dream

vermillion

madder    cinnabar

silk dress simmer

rage & carmine

the reaping

of a hundred thousand

female bodies

for eye pleasure

for lips.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “reaping,” copyright © 2019 by Jeri Theriault, was first published in The Texas Review. It appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of November. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.