Taste of tangerine.
Blue as Tuesday.
Wings, the texture of powdered sugar

Novelists are serious about taxonomy–
the blur of color and text on labels
of blue butterfly genera.

A microscope, like a silver spoon,
holds the parts in morsels.
Today is mundane lavender, classification and details.

Vera is dandelion yellow, pollen and wife.
I see the pearl white of obligation
when she gets into the driver’s seat.
Sound of commuter ferry and newspaper shuffle.

A butterfly is green, but mostly blue.
A moth is pink.

The swallowtail has photoreceptors in its appendage–
it sees with its genitalia.

He inks chapters on index cards.
The synesthesia crosses wires,
so lemons smell like August.

Marry a writer,
he tastes like the rust on bicycle wheels.