National Poetry Month: Tiel Aisha Ansari

 

"Before there was color photography"
(Tiel Aisha Ansari)

Before there was color photography
it was sepia sorrow and black-and-white laughs
that filled up our grayscale memory
with old-fashioned love caught in old photographs.
We kissed under rainbows in monochrome,
the girls in white dresses, the boys in black ties,
recorded both travel and coming home
in silver emulsions unsullied by dyes.
We flatter ourselves on development
of accurate, full-color vision that sets
our lives down in vivid emotion palettes.
We claim that it's truer to represent
the brilliance of love with a gaudy bouquet-
but love was as strong back when roses were gray.

  Tiel Aisha Ansari's work has appeared or is forthcoming in several print and online venues including Islamica Magazine, Mezzo Cammin, and The Lyric, and she is the author of the poetry collection Knocking from Inside, published by Ecstatic Exchange. Her blog is knockingfrominside.blogspot.com.