Pink Coal Depths, by Becky DeVito

Untitled, by Gary DeVito (USA) 2000

​pink coal depths
 
it was your last spring 
in high school 
and you were showing me 
three and a half months 
of your work when 
a rose, open-faced            
cradled shadows
on a heavy piece of paper, gray 
when I turned it over 
to make sure you’d signed 
your first with pastels
vivid pink coal depths
and now there’s no other way
to unfold 
but intensely
and I more than liked it
and I meant it but I don’t 
think you believed me 
it was the kind of thing
I would put on my wall
and I meant that too 
but never said it before 
so you gave it to me
and our hands were pink
but I didn’t want to rob 
even a smudge 
so I asked you to keep it 
until you could spray it put
but we forgot 
and it outlasted 
you and my anger for you
when it found me
rummaging your portfolio
and unfolded me again
 
Becky DeVito

Becky DeVito has used poetry as a means of making sense of her family's tragedy, which culminated in the deaths of her father and brother. Her doctoral dissertation investigates the ways in which poets come to new insights through the process of drafting and revising their poems: http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/items/show/2393. She is a professor of psychology at Capital Community College in Hartford, Connecticut. Her poetry has been published in bottle rockets: A Collection of Short Verse, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Ribbons: Tanka Society of America Journal, and others. She is currently working on a novel series. Please join her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DevitoBecky.