painting by Ichiro Tsuruta 鶴田-郎, 1954

Her face a white mask,
stone jewels her guardians;
carnellian lips her invitation;
a portal each escapes into —
doom’s dissonant stay.

The form is Gogyohka. The poem is directly inspired by Kerfe’s artwork and poetry based on ventriloquist dummies and by our dialogue in the comments for it.

Colleen M. Chesebro is the host of Tanka Tuesday.  Colleen says:
This week, choose your own syllabic form and a color to feature in your syllabic poem. Think about the different ways you can use color in a poem.