Margot Khan

An Opening

The wind is blowing across the freshly plowed field,
its raw ropes of furrows exhaling their practiced birthing breaths,
 
and its little creatures—earthworms, cut worms, wire worms, slugs—
clamoring to feed. The wind blows up the road
 
through the madrones and cedars. It shakes the catkins and rattles
the tired old rosehips in the hedgerows’ thorny arms.
 
It brings gold dust to sift across the back porch, the black chairs,
the blue car—spring’s swift confectioner.
 
Coming up from Barney’s pond, the wind brings the frog’s
night song, the tanker’s horn. The sparrows’ morning briefing.
 
It brings the salty brine of low tide and the sharp tang of snow—
a cleanness, an opening. A memory of driving to the mountains
 
in early fall and the ranger warning if flakes fell we’d be stuck
‘til spring. The wind snapped the little sheet of our tent all night
 
while we tried to sleep, and the small bag of provisions swayed
from its rope in the trees, and we woke to a pink sky and the late-summer
 
flowers—paintbrush and lupine. The wind cold against our cheeks.

Light in the Hand

I wish I remembered the lipstick shade                                 
my grandmother used to wear. Racy Pink?                           
Hot Tamale? Ooh La La? Bare Beige Cinque?                                 
In the clamshell mirrors her compact made, 
light in the hand as a dollar’s change, they’d                        
pull color across her flaccid lips—think                               
pickled peppers in a steel dish. She’d drink                          
then and leave color on the glass, persuade                                      
me not to fall in love. What a gift, those tubes                      
gold and spiraling. Color to suffuse                                      
the darkness. Forget what’s lost and unscrew           
this luxury, this change of face. If you                                  
were a refugee, which one would you choose?                     
Viva Glam? Ardent Sand? Rouge Rendez Vous?