Excerpt from Susan Tichy's latest, Bone Pagoda, 

a beautiful, harsh book from Ahsahta Press. 

Corridor

What O'Keefe said in paint is that light lays hands on us

Not that color is event, but the weight of pure sensation

So rubble, when you touch it, could be absolute blue

Otherwise the word remains transparent

As when critics said the poet

Must be equal to what she has seen

An umbrella closes suddenly in the middle of the block

And a forest is not tableau it is a forest

When the hospital corridors ran with blood

They  said think of another image, that one's old

***************

Here's what O'Keefe said about bones--

I was most interested in the holes in the bones--

what I saw through them--

particularly the blue

from holding them up in the sun 

against the sky.