Soothsayer in Red, by Nivretta Thatra

still from installation, Pink Mist (Space Division), by James Turrell (USA) 1994.

Soothsayer in Red 

Catch up to her, the sweater wearing manifestation of your thoughts,
before she enters the convenience store
Tell her, 
“No, no, that’s not where we’re going today,
where we’re going, 
the dark is red--
fold of rose,
sharper than pomegranate juice--
In the pitch of night it is not black you see, but red.”

Tell her that, and more, to keep her from going
into her learned darkness, which is
repetitive and no more defines her than 
a memorized chord defines a virtuoso guitarist. 

Tell her,
“Where we’re going,
black and red haven’t swapped--
red are the stop signs, the sirens,
red are the threads of mama’s nightgown--
The only thing different is
In the absence of colour, there is red.”

Nivretta Thatra

Nivretta Thatra (thatniv.com): is something of a science writer, nothing of a chilled capitalist achiever, and everything of a small child absorbed in sonic moments of nondual purity / whose work appears/is forthcoming in The Ubyssey, The Journal of Neuroscience, and Shrapnel Magazine.