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.
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