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After Kandinsky’s Improvisation 31 (Sea Battle)
By Adam Vines and Allen Jih
© 2008Portland Review Literary Journal

She insists that it is all warfare, the slash
and slosh of water, the black shoe
scuffing the rocks.  The day becomes
triangular, all points equal and relevant.
I tell her it would be better if
all things centered on vacations, on islands
petulant with nectar and musk, the men
on their fishing boats, the women
waving goodbye.  The museum is closing,
but we both stare at the red water spout,
its hue that of Alabama clay,
and the black slashes of reeds, one driven
deep into the mouth of a fish. 
Hands reach out of the ocean.
Tragic, isn’t it, the punishments
of those who desired beyond themselves,
letting the waves roll over their chests and faces?