Poetry

Fall 2007

Susan Maurer

Zinc: Franklin and Ogdenberg, NJ

They are not the correct colors
it’s o.k. to admire like
taupe or beige. They are DayGlo’s,
gawked at, cheap, carnival,
what one doesn’t like.
And they spring up in the’60s cliché
of black light, albeit short wave ones.
In the dark, ultra-violet sucked up,
the stones’ perturbed atoms strew
neon green, facetious gold, hint of
fallen orange. These rocks have secret
lives, fluoresce, have double selves,
turn from ordinary stone
to Day-Glo slash, or hot coal orange.
I gawk. I love them,
in the same category of miracle of
eggs which stand on end at equinox.