Daren Shiau (b. 1971)
SELECTED POEMS
Picking
Picking our favourite colours at Starbucks, I take “light pink”. Stacey excitedly picks “sunset orange”, the stock colour of the new Nissan convertible. Even “black” is not somber enough for you. It has to be “tiefschwarz” which you explain, biting your index fingernail, means “deep black”. In your mind, probably as heavy as the inner pages of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness you carry around. Not blacker though as your brief and sudden smile as I mention his name: a rupture of sunflowers.
by Daren Shiau
from Velouria (2007)
