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Column 717

To Make Color

Intro by Ted Kooser
12.16.2018

Ryler Dustin of Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton, is a grad­u­ate stu­dent in our cre­ative writ­ing pro­gram at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Nebras­ka, and this love­ly poem is from the man­u­script of a book for which he’s hop­ing to find a publisher. 

To Make Color

Every morning, my grandmother cleaned the Fischer stove
in the back of the trailer, lifted ash in a shovel, careful
 
not to spill the white-gray dust. Precious, she said, her breath
smoking in the cold. Precious in winter's first lavender
 
not-quite-light—and you could smell it, the faintest acrid hint
of ash, a crispness calling you from bed. You could watch her
 
cap it in a chicory coffee can to stack among others, back bent
from a long-gone fever. For the garden in spring, she said.

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We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2018 by Ryler Dustin, "To Make Color." Poem reprinted by permission of Ryler Dustin. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.