the world today is half ocean half construction site

everywhere wide open

i walk into a taco bar and the waiter asks if i like this

i want to tell him touch me i’m made of water

the T takes me very slowly across the river

at the moment there is no other choice

frequencies are not real

even the semantics of our eyes are inconsistent

the tunnel went on and on pleased with its overtones

others have the loudness of their hands

if i can’t be heard i’ll look into your eyes blinking once for yes twice for indecision

what is the frequency of blue

irises are blue for the same reason as sky or ocean it is not a color you can have

have as in possess as in paint with

we are not in awe of likeness but of something close to study

viridian was mixed into her skin and sargent would paint water with the same longing 

in the blue room i longed for blue

in the living room someone is talking about chinamen and their screaming children and dirty culture and in the same breath botticelli

sketching a yellow canary then i think about closeness as asphyxiation

there are no borders anymore

despite that i still have a chinese look about me

skilled as botticelli was he did not draw venus with both nipples

in other words we saw beauty in the unsaid

how i breathed you even apart

sound travels further submerged

at low frequencies waves compress the chest walls

everything is bluer than blue

the floor of the ocean its alkalis

how willing to move today as any other

Published May 16th, 2021

Lydia T. Liu is a poet and a PhD student in computer science at University of California, Berkeley. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Bellingham Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Frogpond, Indiana Review, and The Columbia Review.

Nicole Storm is a California-based artist. Storm has been part of Creative Growth Art Center for over 26 years. Based in Oakland, Creative Growth is a non-profit arts organization for artists with disabilities with both a professional studio and gallery. Storm has exhibited her work at the Outsider Art Fair in New York and the D’Dessin Art Fair in Paris. Her recent exhibition at Creative Growth Gallery, The Rainbow Two, can be viewed online, along with more of Storm’s work.