№ 8 Strafes the White-Out

This is a good day. № 8, with her honeysuckle

machine gun, has mowed down the avalanche.

Today we can sleep again, knowing that in hindsight

a cadmium red, in the dead of night a blood orange.

We love № 8, the assassin. The gesso melts;

the whitewash fades. The machine gun nuzzles

the pubic hairs of the forest. There are no alibis

for the green brain, the purple patch, the blue alleluia.