Brittney Corrigan
En Plein Air
Painter with horse-hair brush in a field of mustangs,
animal-bodied palette at hand: carmine red for sunset,
blush of cochineal insects plucked from prickly pear.
Sepia sky ombrés through cloud canvas to plain, cuttlefish
ink staining dusty hides, restless fetlocks that shift weight
in summer’s post-storm light. Bloom of tufted cirrus clouds
in an eggshell streak above the ridge. Mares’ manes fall
along muscled crests, cirri in bone black and mummy
brown. Nicker and brushstroke. Stamp and blend.
Ring of hooves and flanks in twilit hue. Dapple
grey and pinto, rush of wind through painter’s smock.
Blue roan, cremello, chestnut, buckskin. Painter’s skin
copper-red in the lengthening dusk. Fall of Tyrian purple
across muzzles and flanks, color crushed or milked
from murex snails—elongate, sea-salted shells sculptured
with spines—tinted by crepuscular light. Mirage of painter,
dream of horses, now dissipate into bluebunch, wheatgrass,
muhly, wild rye. Feral pigmentation in the prairie night.
Triolet for the Marine Biologist I Didn’t Become
My land-limbs twined and woven in the deep
with bodies flippered, tentacled, and finned.
Remora-like, my heart’s barnacled keep.
My land-limbs twined and woven in the deep
among the upright whales, plumbed in their sleep.
Beside the walrus, seamed and thickly skinned.
My land-limbs twined and woven in the deep.
Geared body flippered, tentacled, and finned.