The Rainbow Orange-Deficiency Virus

by Sarah Kai Neal

Somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue.

We all know the song. But what if the rainbows

disappear? Impossible, you may say, but

unfortunately, the possibility of the impossibility

grows more and more possible.

Across the globe, rainbows plagued by the nearing

of the red stripe to the yellow as the death

of their orange nears are now undergoing an innovative

procedure that is saving lives, and color.

To describe open rainbow surgery, we interviewed

Dr. Tender Heart Bear at Care Bear University who

describes the procedure:

“The lucky rainbow is saved by the needed orange

transplanted from a healthy rainbow donor--usually

a poor rainbow, or one who passed away

most untimely but signed the back of its arching card.

During surgery, the rainbow is put to sleep beneath

a sunny day. Anesthesiologists spray mist

once every sixty seconds--just enough so that

the subject is still there, but in a fading way.

Just before it disappears completely, more mist,

then counting to thirty seconds until the rainbow begins

to blink. At this time, in a slim window of 30 seconds

before the next spray makes it again vibrant, rainbow surgeons

like myself inject orange from the skyscraper needle

into the sleeping rainbow.”

Postop, Dr. T. Heart describes, rainbows are watched closely

for rejection of the donor orange, and administered sun

and light pills that clinical studies have shown help

it accept the orange as its own. The risk of rainbow death

in surgery continues to decrease, as leading rainbow surgeons

learn more about rainbow makeup.

In Fix Sick Rainbows school at Care Bear University

surgeons and researchers alike work tirelessly

to uncover the epidemic, now coined the Rainbow

Orange-Deficiency Virus that attacks the orange stripe.

As they dissect rainbow cadavers and begin mapping

its ultraviolet strand, it is their hope to produce a vaccine

before the end of the decade that will prevent

the attack on orange.

Associated Press

email: sneal@rainboworangedeficiencyvirus.com

Woman Hand me

Not one sip or two, but swallows.

Did you know when you jump, you fall

back down she never said.

Those understoods. Feathers.

Inside me I never said. Thousands of eggs.

I’m not bleeding but I will, but if I were,

what would that mean?

Woman Hand, reach me. Up my dress: a nest

of birds, many promises of red.

Bound: September 19, 1981

A vertical incision, latex fingers fishing in
the day a million gathered to hear sittin’ in the railway station
two brothers reunite in a New York park.
Spinal drugs flooded cold
silver between us, no longer your body my destination
calling, did they change
my mind—a breech
of contract with Universe—for a poet
second thoughts about planet Earth
I turned half-circle
before steel dragged its heel, skidded through
the muscles you held me in an endless dream.

The curtain between us so you didn’t see
the mess they’d made, the moment of me
half-in/half-out of your body, before they raised
me dangling in fluorescence, drugged and singing home, where
fierce, I fish-out-of-water shook.
Strange hands fondled, beneath my nails
your was-blue washed clean
and wrapped me.

The deliverance: out of home; into your arms’ sudden perfect;
little time to recall the difference, the bleeding over that I long to be
when the Latching sets in, magnetite-
devotee, I swallowed the formula, dulled shades of mediocrity
through the plastic tip, the new plural
never full-
made, we slept through
your tubes tied, knotted off
the possibility of a threesome ("I only wanted you") we slept bound
as they sewed you back together—
the gut-mouth they’d made—spilled,
stitched up to not-talk, silently, not to
ever say more than one, longitudinal scar, homeward.

To leave god/painted inside the gut

You may find history ends luminously/ ends bathed
in steady lumens/ Or you found it never ends/ Always
you knew the ceiling falls in five hundred years

No creature breathed/ nor bathed in light
to witness another history made from piles
No iguana’s 3rd eye pale / and blinking/ No drag
of armored tail/ over/ the bearded god’s
fallen hand

The hand the painter with his neck
careened/ up/ five trips around the Sun
strained/ to leave god/ painted inside the gut

To become/ nearly light/ Aching the lumens
in his body as he stood on scaffolds/ suspended
knowing it would fade/ it would
fall

The homos going down

We’re all going down down/ do I stutter

No more mama grizzlies no more pantaloons/ No pills

for sleep/ pills for ails / the homos going down for

The elephants going down gather/ still we can’t see water

The forecast comin/ The mother of ultra floods

Extra thin with wings they’ve made us/ when clotted losses

need a blubbered kind of hold/ 'Cause concrete sinks

I said/ Stinks/ & the homos/ We’re all going down

The whitest noise: a lullabye

Bombs, screams, then silence: the lullabye:

sheet music his body heard—nerves

ivy-curled: eighth notes; intestines barbed

in stacatta; heart trebled in staff

Bombs, screams, then silence: the lullabye: the memories

composed in his body—recorded

the oldest song: the whitest noise

till the child no longer/but always

having so immersed in music been

knew how children’s sleep was made

To the sounds of whole notes—thrown—

four beats from the shoulder, screams, then silence

If it were Father Earth

If it was Father Earth would it stop this/ Was Father Oak below

Greatfather Moon/ His speckled kingdom/ Would it stop

this bone drill of oceans deep/ If Father salt Father sea

If boyfish glinting along faults/ Where Father Quake cracks

open/ Melts us down/ If his firepot would steam us new

If it Brother Wind was /Would it blow this

place cool/ Clean/ Would it stop