Tuesday Poem - Pantone 185C by Jon Paul Fiorentino

PANTONE 185C

There is a mostly red, cylindrical ashtray. right there. On a

picnic table. Concentrate. It is mostly empty. You will notice

there is one half-smoked cigarette in it. A Viceroy. The red ash-

tray on the picnic table is in the park and so are you.

Does the ashtray belong to someone? No. It did but it doesn’t.

What kind of red is it? You don’t know the name for it yet. It’s

similar to what’s left of the red on your nails. You tell yourself

Pantone 185C. It is Pantone 185C.

Do you want it? You do but you don’t. You don’t smoke anymore

but you want to. Cylindrical Pantone 185C appeals. Why did

someone bring and leave Pantone 185C in the park? What was

that someone thinking? Your first thought is he wasn’t thinking.

But if he was, what was he thinking? Did he think it was too

precise? An emblem of a person he no longer wants to see in

emblems? Someone who had hurt him? He doesn’t like to be

hurt. So he brought it and left it. Emblems, in poems as in parks,

are boring.

You know this. Why are you drawn to it? You are drawn to it

because you look up and there are old women, young women,

old men, young men, children, whole families, half-families in

the park. They all wear little squares of Pantone 185C.

Another wonderful poem from Canadian poet Jon Paul Fiorentino. I had to find out what Pantone 185c was, it intrigued me so below find the link in case you are not a home decorator or something like that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantone

Pantone 185c is in Jon Paul's new book – Needs Improvement – published by Coach House Books.

http://www.chbooks.com/biographies/jon-paul-fiorentino