Adrian Dallas Frandle

Numismatics in the Morning 

Another museum. Another poet. Another token museum 

poem. Again, exquisite light, exquisitely framed, curated to fall 

at the foot of Apollo. Aquatic shimmer, again, illuminating

the display plate. Another queer agog at something shiny. 

A corvine attitude through and through. As a gay bird, I flit 

between exhibits, reading anything flashy for signs of life.

Museums appear geared to produce this effect in patrons 

aesthetically inclined to collectivist avian attitudes. Beauty 

is manipulable and manipulating, too. Its affinity for stolen light 

entraps every time I walk through that first sky-stained gallery. 

If I could take home one thing to keep (which one can never 

do), it would be the singular crossbeam of sun, the moment 

heaven is brought low and rays crucify the solar god’s feet. 

To tuck an instant like a coin under wing–this time–worth taking. 

Eleven Azure Arguments 

One memory must have a color, true. Its case 

made by the arrival of clear skies that break 

like surf across my gaze and foam at the horizons. 

Two nostalgia is baby blue and swaddles shoulders 

in uniforms of youth. In this image, I am Stussy-stamped 

and re-fastened in the clasp of D’s hemp & sea-

shell necklace. In this perfect recollection, I don 

emblems of the Official 90s NoCal High School 

Femme in Hiding Costume.TM.  

Three the whole natural world rejoices 

in shades of retrospect. 

Four to be returned to an azure rarity that never was. 

Five an initial innocence defines this singular 

hue, as if God had saved the most 

expensive colors for their most special 

   or specious occasions. 

Six truth is, as far as I can tell you, there is no truth 

in this color. None truer than any other. Only 

an annulment of what I thought light meant 

or what I hoped light could do. 

Seven Mary’s blue. 

Eight Ocean blue.

Nine Truth is, I did not yet realize violence, 

too, can be radiant. Or that, ten silence lies

between blue lips. Or it’s the blue flame 

that burns the hottest, eleven. 

The truth is (this is where the argument ends) 

it’s not the color red that will come  

to drench the white walls of my dreams, time 

and time again, not red’s remuneration 

that sickens me when wailing from sirens. 

Truth is, 

I may never want to cross the border 

warding me from heaven, its thin line 

        of gaudy cerulean.