STATE OF AFFAIRS OF STATE

Lamp black, flesh tint, scarlet lake, cobalt
violet: colors of the president’s deep afternoon

nap dance under his elephant eyelids. Now thong
pink, rose madder, and coral orange betray

a deeper purpose far beneath his cerulean blue
window shades. When the Cabinet meets, sap

green runs from their mouths. When the Speaker
listens, raw umber coats his ears. A true

cadmium yellow provokes the jugular
press, while handlers run interference

red, interference blue, and titanium white
at network filters. Fugitive pigments

pledge allegiance to one view, then shift
in time’s breeze to another, ruining harmony’s

chorus of inclusion. The glass palette
of everyone’s expectations shatters so jagged—

antique gold and iridescent silver spilling
to the floor—that the chief executive can

no longer patch pleasure’s damaged portrait:
all his handshakes and orations, future

memoirs, vetoes, votes, positions, his legacy,
the traction crackle of a fading painting.