by Shanan Ballam
Deep blue throat ringed
with green, blossoming
to yellow, ochre, crimson.
Steam and sulfur sting
my face. In a field
of white mineral crust,
the spring’s rainbow bloom
is so hot, so acidic,
it could scald and then dissolve
your skin.
Near the edges,
green and yellow
splotches cling, and through binoculars
I see they are monkeyflowers,
their lips flecked with red,
like little skinned knees.
They are just like we
were as children, trembling near
the edge of danger,
living on the fringe, tip-toeing across
the eggshell-thin surface
of our father’s alcoholism,
its kaleidoscopic complexity,
our lives ever-shifting,
his bright smile dissolving
after the third drink, red face twisting
into glass-eyed rage
and I lean
closer to the pool,
closer in
to take a picture,
but a sudden change
in wind blinds me with steam
and when it passes I see
I have turned around,
I am too close to the edge
of the boardwalk,
the sapphire throat open
to swallow me and
dizzy, I stumble,
I am unstable,
there is no bottom to this,
one more misstep
and this life will
collapse,
I’ll free fall
in the scald.
::
Shanan Ballam is a Senior Lecturer at Utah State University where she teaches poetry writing and composition. She is the author of The Red Riding Hood Papers (Finishing Line Press, 2010), Pretty Marrow (Negative Capability 2013), Inside the Animal (Main Street Rag, 2019), and a poetry chapbook entitled first poems after the stroke which is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in May 2024.
Image: Amy Hamerly
ID: a steaming, blue geyser at Yellowstone National Park.
Psaltery & Lyre 