William Stobb

Yellow, Rabbits

Riding in to write about a bright

yellow color for a psychic’s color catalog

I think how life breaks

my children’s hearts in various ways every day. 

Someone doesn’t call doesn’t like

someone back someone feels like the weird kid

who just hangs out with his dad.

All red ideas.  I pedal on. 

Remember the huge beanbag chair

back in that corner by the art books?

I might finally sit in that baby today

although it’s brown—I wish

it were yellow. I just want to find out

who painted that stick-figure Don Quixote

black and white except the yellow sun

on Don horse and windmill.

Something about that hunched

delusional hero and the forever white

at the edge of combustion. 

Dwarf star.  I grew up

in a yellow house. My parents drove

a yellow Malibu Classic wagon.

I once slept ten hours in the backseat

woke up in a Kansas

City parking ramp and when I

stood it was a hundred degrees.

The world passed very quickly

through every yellow

on its way to a white beyond consciousness.

Heat signature. I want the pain

to be worth it when they think someday

about yellow I want my children to know 

Rothko brushed it over a thin layer

of rabbit collagen glue

to make us feel we might fall in and up

and if they think about the rabbits

everywhere continually born and dying

mainly violently they’ll understand

all yellow burns through

into what wide outside.