Black is a Most Beautiful Color too. Through the prism of science, white is the presence of all colors, black the absence of light and color.
But our skins are not science yet glisten with its presence, brushed pigments of pimento, radish, dandelions, onion, charcoal. As a boy,
the summer burnt blueberry skin of the Bahamian fishermen who graces me his artfulness, rolls a conch shell with his left foot, chops open its pink extending spiral crown with his machete. Firm fingers yank-out and wash in the inrushing waves the still squirming sea snail. He cuts into its meat and hands me a gracious silver sliver.
I kneel into his generosity, knees sunk deep in the wet sand. I chew and bite into the musclier salt and wiggle of the ocean’s boundless motion.
Pale skin is not all colors but pink, canary, banana, mango, flamingo, cherry with drops of chestnut and squirrel moles and freckles between bristles of hair
with blood flowing a dolphin blue hue disappearing under the thicket and bramble of bone stretching muscle and tendrils of tendon.
An editor, writer, translator, and mathematician, Kurt’s first book of poems, essays, and translations, Halfway Between Everywhere, was published in December, 2022. His work appears in The Lascaux Review, North Dakota Review, San Antonio Review, U.K. Lancaster University’s Red Ogre Review, U.H. Honor College’s Athena and other journals. Two additional collections, Apophrades and Intrepitudes and Disfigurments, are forthcoming.
