Jed Myers

Self-Portrait in Blue

I am that blue the blood is before

it hits air. Serene sorrow of the vein

delta back of my hand as a blue dawn

seeps from the night. Blue as the third

note, the mi, bent minor to weep

from a harmonica’s reed, blue irony

pulling the fifth flat too till it’s full off-

key to get us all into that blue room

where at least our aches will mingle

like the blown smoke blued by a neon

Blue Ribbon logo lit up in a window—

I am that blue of this oceany planet

shot from a lonely robot photographer’s

orbit, blue of such saturation not

one neural net out there won’t turn to it

from the everywhere-else-speckled dark,

blue the high circuits beam down in pics

of our fratricide cyclones and prison

cities, face of the Earth blue as the blue

baby choked on its birth fluid, blue

gleam on the two-edged stainless blade

my father shaved with, teasing death—

I am that blue shade of these vapors

who gossip and titter just to my left

ever since I first met the blue stare

out of that portrait, my mother’s father

dead by her thirteenth year. Blue

as the metallic swirls sold as blueberry

in the cold dome of vanilla reward

for finishing off my slice of brisket

despite its blue-green iridescence. Blue

haze of the distance. Makes you look,

blue. Like you might see through it—

Jed Myers is author of three books of poetry, most recently Learning to Hold (Wandering Aengus Press, Editors’ Award, 2024). Recent honors include the Northwest Review Poetry Prize, the River Heron Poetry Prize, and the Sundress Chapbook Editor’s Choice Award. Poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The Poetry Review, RHINO, Poetry Northwest, Southern Indiana Review, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere. Myers lives in Seattle and edits the journal Bracken. www.jedmyers.com