<span style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:15px;border-collapse:collapse"><div><span style="font-family:tahoma, sans-serif;font-size:small">From “The Saturation Project”</span></div>
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<p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-right:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;margin-left:0pt"><font><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small">(after Karlheinz Shockhausen’s </span></font></font><i><font><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small">Hymnen</span></font></font></i><font><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small"> and David Hume’s “missing shade of blue”)</span></font></font></p>
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<p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-right:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;margin-left:0pt"><font><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small">Cadmium red: Because this is the color I imagine my living human insides to be—warm, muscular, and toxic—it is a color I have not yet fully experienced. Once upon a blotted-out time, cadmium was a magnetized pole of in-out. It remains an involuntary projection, a screen behind closed eyes instantaneously evoked when I imagine my gruesome death. Once my insides are brought to light—like an ancient fresco buried under a church floor—the color immediately disintegrates.</span></font></font></p>
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<font><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small">Scarlet Lake: Swim in it all day, and get out glazed. You are sleeping or swimming, either way inside an ancient aquatic state. Fuck in the lake that dusk and pleasure shadows you but will not stay in your body as you walk home, side by side in a blue funk.</span></font></font></p>
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<font><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small">Alizarin crimson: Dark, transparent trance of reading for the first time. My mind hot and frothy under the spell. When I look up from my book, my grandmother is holding a flashcard. The word in red. “I don’t know,” I say, “alizarin crimson.” She keeps holding it up, looking at me: “YET.”</span></font></font></p>
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<font><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small">Vermilion: Intense red made from sulfur and mercury. Prone to turning black in sunlight. When one day I call my shirt “dusty rose,” my older brother insists it’s “vermillion.” I chalk it up to a version of male colorblindness until adults take his side. Even then, it took a paint swatch to convince me. My brother’s favorite color had always been blue, pitting his will against mine. How could it be that I failed to perceive the color I love best in the world? What is the corrective to see what I want? What is the treatment to see what’s there? What human affliction: the blindness toward affinity and love.</span></font></font></p>
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<font><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small">Brick: It is a reserve red; one we know exists, but are saving for an emergency. Like all reds, it doesn’t lighten it pinks. If pinking shears minimize the fray, this red is the cruel radiance of afraid.</span></font></font></p>
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<p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-right:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;margin-left:0pt"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To keep reading this piece, please continue to the <a href="http://realpoetik.org">RealPoetik</a> website.</span></font></p>
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<font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:small"><br></span></font></p><p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-right:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;margin-left:0pt"><span style="letter-spacing:-0.2pt"><span style="font-size:small"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"><b>Christine Hume</b> is the author of three books of poetry—most recently </font></span><i><span style="font-size:small"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">Shot</font></span></i></span><span style="letter-spacing:-0.2pt"><span style="font-size:small"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"> (Counterpath, 2009)</font></span></span><span style="letter-spacing:-0.2pt"><span style="font-size:small"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">. She is coordinator of the interdisciplinary Creative Writing Program at Eastern Michigan University. Every Sunday at 8 p.m. (EST), she hosts Poetry Radio, which </font></span></span><span style="font-size:small"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">features contemporary and historic sound art, performance art, sound poetry, collaborations between writers and musicians, student work, audio narratives, and sound poetry. Today listen in for a special Valentine Day's show:</font></span><span style="font-size:small"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"> </font></span><a href="http://www.emich.edu/studentorgs/wqbr/" style="color:rgb(42, 93, 176)" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext"><span style="font-size:small"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">http://www.emich.edu/</font></span><span style="font-size:small"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif">studentorgs/wqbr/</font></span></span></a><span style="font-size:small"><font face="tahoma, sans-serif"> or when you are more in the mood, listen to the podcast at iTunes U. </font></span></p>
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</span>-- <br>RealPoetik<br><a href="http://www.realpoetik.org" target="_blank">www.realpoetik.org</a><br>