Blues Factory
And so I fell in love with a color…
—Maggie Nelson
We blast indigo
out of dusk, dig
dark cobalt, smelt
the low notes, purge
the Reds. We eschew
sky-blue, extrude blue-
black, aggregate
cerulean, lapis, dark
navy. We stir, cook,
break, cut, stack, and pack
the blues into blues crates
labeled bluestone or blue
agate or American Blues,
Chicago style. Once
in a blue moon we
ship dark amethyst.
Yes, we get the blues.
We go blue with cold.
We get the factory-worker
blues, the love-sick blues,
the blue-moon-shining-over-me
blues. And yes, we play the blues,
we play the red-hot honky-tonk blues.