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A New New Guide
Look at this orange. When Rothko
painted No. 12, 1954, was he thinking
of a setting sun, or a piece of fruit?
In every language I know,
the word for both is the same.
In ancient Greek, there is no blue,
so Homer said wine-dark,
and honey was green; even the sky
stretched like a canvas above the Aegean
was cast in bronze. Sometimes, at night,
I worry about what I’m missing,
simply because I don’t know the word for it.
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Lara Egger is the author of How to Love Everyone and Almost Get Away with It (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021) which won the John C. Zacharis First Book award. Her poems have appeared, or will soon appear, in Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, The Southern Review, Bennington Review, Ninth Letter, Conduit, and elsewhere. Originally from Australia, Egger now lives in Boston where she co-owns a Spanish tapas bar.
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Mark Rothko, No. 12 (Red and Yellow), 1954, Oil on canvas.
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Author: Terence Winch
