Yellow Sounds Off

The sun was mine and that should have been enough

always—not the ocean or the sky or blood,

but the whole sun, and I was on top, everywhere

a grapefed figurehead, primary,

and more popular than my siblings—

bumbling Blue, temperamental Red, the baby

of the family with her prophesying and atonal

compositions, thrift-store wardrobe.

Yes, I had the sun, but then came the change.

The mouthfeel of me didn’t help, not as rhymy, not

as potent, silly in songs—mellow,

and so far distant, the word of me, from my look,

the way I could make a body feel. The sound

my status, yes—like Stefan, Tiffany, Tabitha, Les.

Red she looks red. Blue he sounds blue. But I knew

that as I got older, Yellow would no longer suit.

I tried Y-Dog, tried Princess Lola, Layla and Sprite.

No greater shame than the queen changing their name

to ape the condition of the second-born, Blue,

his feet puppy-big, his foghorn voice, his very essence

heavy, but true to life somehow, people thought,

a soulful depth—everything to everyone

while I got stuck in a corner—happy-sallow eldest

lighting up the room but Never surprising I heard

whispered at our coming-out ball, always the same

parlor trick, my damn joy souring like a sweet,

the Werther’s Original of hues, and no one

could stand the heat of me anymore.

Van Gogh knew. Picasso, no. And if it’s true

I am past my prime, easily faded, the thing that glitters,

it was the last century that done it. I made appearances

in summer hats, in the palette of cinematic grit.

And in the umbrella of the musical I shone always,

a caricature of who I really am, innocence,

but I could not get out from under the shadow

of Red who seemed to pop and indicate, all grown up.

Mom and dad worried no one wanted to be her friend

for the same reasons she took over—unreliable, moody—

no sunshine at all and they’d mumble We wish

she could be more like you, our daylight, our heir.

But I got a bad wrap for a fever, and newspapers

gave my brother and sister big roles in the polis elections.

Don’t get me started about boardgames. That’s when

I nadired, an afterthought for some, below

my subordinates even, last pick in Candyland

when for thousands of years I’d been last-picking

Green, at kickball and such—garish nature-sprouter,

transcendent only when I shine through him.

I am the sun! Though the crayon of me fails, pale

on white. Blue prevails—navy, midnight. But what

about my soul, my dreamy, the seaside cliffs of moi?

Purple in their trenchcoat tells people I am not

a nuanced thinker, that the lyrics of my neo-Americana

folk songs are derivative, that my every spontaneous

adventure—sunflower, moonglow—is jejune,

calculated as a has-been’s re-brand, a leopard

changing her spots—clever Purp, you Splatter.

I remember when you were in first grade

and got sent to the principal’s office for constantly

smelling your own fingers. I consoled you

in the sparse shade of the swingset. It’s okay

to cry, go ahead right in the mulch, my plum.

And now you have the temerity to pity me,

tsk-tsking my taste, calling me treacly, and neat?

No. I am an utter boodle of unexpressed condolence

for your shortcomings, will be glad to deign

to congratulate you from on high for how far you’ve come,

my trophy so heavy, but I know you’ll be holding it

some day soon—all of y’all in the color wheel bowing listless

still to me, so watch it, is what I’m saying.

I’m the golden child around here, Most Likely to Be

the Paint Job on a Quirky Car driven by a senior,

and that’s not nothing, that’s no reason to be heard

feeling sorry for myself, to oh-what-have-I-become.

You will not hear me asking how far is the climb

back to the zenith for a glory such as me.