William Doreski

Fustian

When I look hard at the light and shade of prismatic sunsets, I never catch the colors real poets detect. They describe puce, ecru, mauve, whereas I see red and black like a burn victim’s skin. You agree that I lack the color sense of the true artist in prose or doggerel, but then you always take my side in arguments. Unless you’re disagreeing, of course. You see different colors: green and deep blue, with a hint of fustian. But that isn’t a color: it’s a dark, heavy, bombastic cloth to drape over thick rude men. Expensive, ugly textiles I could never wear. I wish we resided in a Japanese print, something early nineteenth century by Hokusai or Hiroshige. Then the colors would be prepared for us, and we could receive them like a blessing. The real poets lavish their verse with tints I can admire only from a distance. Like the makeup on a sex worker strolling along the boulevard. You know which boulevard—the one of broken dreams. Whenever we drive past, you comment on how professional the professionals look. But it’s a hard life, like being a poet and writing for the New Yorker or Poetry. Hard, degrading work, but decently paid. I can’t spend that much flesh on a craft I’ve never understood. Yet you keep encouraging me. Or are you mocking me? I’ve never understood irony, but believe it’s yet another color, a drab fustian dimming the sky after the sun has finally disowned us.