Carrie Magness Radna
Orange
You never liked the color orange,
even those mod hooded sweatshirts the cool kids converge upon—
The sky is now colored orange.
Long days without regrets is what we can ever strive to,
but fear could be called orange
by most people. You hated to show any fear; your closed heart
could had been colored orange.
Once I thought you could cure my loneliness, like Vitamin C.
See, I can't rhyme with orange!
What a cruel joke for all poets, seeing sunshine with only one eye
open, while cutting wedges out of oranges,
lemons and limes, trying to dress up another drink for Happy Hour.
Bio
Carrie Magness Radna is an archival audiovisual cataloger at the New York Public Library, a singer, a lyricist-songwriter, and a poet who loves to travel. Her poems have previously appeared in the Oracular Tree, Tuck Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, First Literary Review-East, Mediterranean Poetry and The Poetic Bond VIII, and will be published in Nomad's Choir and an upcoming transcendent poetry anthology by Cosmographia (Summer 2019). Her first chapbook, Conversations with dead composers at Carnegie Hall (Flutter Press) was published in January 2019, and Remembering you as I go walking (Boxwood Star Press) will be published later in 2019. She won third prize for "The tunnel" (category: Words on the Wall: All-Genre Prompt) at the 69th annual Philadelphia Writers' Conference (2017), where she attended workshops taught by the renowned poets Yolanda Wisher and Chrys Tobey. Born in Norman, Oklahoma, she is a member of the Greater New York Music Library Association (GNYMLA), and is a member of the New York Poetry Forum, Parkside Poets, Riverside Poets, Brownstone Poets and Nomad's Choir. When she's not performing classical choral works with Riverside Choral Society or New Year's Eve performances with the New York Festival Singers, or writing art song lyrics with her choir buddies, or traveling, she lives with her husband Rudolf in Manhattan.