LAURA CARTER

 

                                     



[UNTITLED]

 

 

Part 1

 

            In body

            the place between noumenal

& phenomenal chasm’s

a cradle brushed with water

tempuraed

 

I am afraid of this hate.

Someone waved the Cadillac flag

into the sky.

 

            The accountant took fire

to make jack-o-lanterns

into little nests.

 

Anthropomorphized music

little bird walking in street

            perpendicular

as good as rocks once gathered

 

            as good as haecceity

in the back of a green car

as the feeling I

get from this

 

is not the feeling

of the tufts of clouds

or the analytic muse

or barrette        in Atlanta

 

or the feeling that you get

wearing the peasant

or the shiny duck dress.

I crossed the street beside them

 

all with a mobile phone

dyed purple and writ girlish

in new skin and hair.

 

The one place where the phone will ring

in between walls

of the tennis court

swatting at flies

 

walking in circles through trees

until I get to the here.

            I am

            afraid

            of all the love.

 

            I stand in line and eat a peach

while the bus meanders up the block

swatting waving swatting more

in between walls and other folks

 

            blue shoes blue hair blue water pail

purple chugging ochre

driving past

 

            making a cup of tea

I am afraid of stories

but not of the telephone.

            Eternity in dimes.

                        The bus chugs past.

 

And if you can think of

the green, we will be

            happy to eat candy.

 


Part 2

 

Are you listening

poems are over my heart

a quiddity of green

 

            done up over the blue

oh        I’m not sure what the blue

 

has to do with the

listening or the

prophets or the coral

or the tabula brushed with

 

            gaze & indecision

the mimetic representation

of the camera

far from abstract

 

& beside the water the other sea

grazing the houses of stone

where the orphans make their memories

swathed in red & black tat-tat

ethic of the nondescript story

a locked box of natural things

as I see into their pasts I

                        break

 

                                    out into spring

it is a hundred years older

than the grass beneath the porch &

there’s opera in the window

a mother leaning

            with an old theory

            blond girls run in the yard

& their eyes are wide open

in April

 

A Word

 

            Almost deaf at it

a body gone

a body is gone

 

on the road a black pen

differential volume &

yen at the crux

            the sun leaning into

the early garden

in circuits of red

                        it returns home to its

                        path of sundom

                        into the gaze of wake

                                    the flowers burning

                                    while I’m talking on the phone

 

a glittery suited man

comes to my door to bring

day & night in fragments of

what we once called this

& I’m above below

 

            the city knows rain

the rags of the year

in red

 

a silver blue

            pencilled question

as I count the cars

& bundle up my house & leave

 

            the associations

one has of ethic

I have of half

            at day

            on Ponce de Leon or

driving through Sweet Auburn

beneath the folded sky

that pre-dawn moment

when motion starts

an arm of lilies

the scent of honeysuckle

 

flying a kite

that’s not black

that’s not white either

                                                sky

 

            structure of the possible &

woe                  is not this

            or situated

 


Part 3

 

            A resemblance

                        under white Christmas

                                    I answer:

            starfish, kiss, open

associate

the final drink with

the car I’ll be driving

of birth &

reconnaissance &

the man’s name is

written on the wall

in bright red

                        of agency

            & whiteness

I curdle in

            & then stand up

to see the two

of the diffusion

invisible

on the duckish sea

 

He picks up a scythe

& pins an angel to the

top of the         nickeled

tree & I want the angel

breath              of the

buttons

 

            On the lake the Madonna

over the tops of attention

I park the car, get out

& fold my hands

into the fifth circle of

indiscriminate love

& I brush a bird

up against a sign & I

see

            the people kneeling close

 

I sleep alone

& am held by

            the corner

 

            & coming out of the corners

after I wake up

the light smell of the E

 

No one sees me board it—

no one’s at the marriage of

            the nod and jiving

where I mistook one for

a look—

the keeper of the train

reminds me that the lake is

keen on Monday mornings

 

I put out my hands &

            make a fresh moi

from the two

colors of the sun

                        shining

 

I walk in circles

to meet the day

            & stand close

to what I cannot be granted

 

for the assemblage is

ratio & cool

cooler than the water & not

            as cool as a formalism

or a cyclic

 

                                    imagination’s song

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                      

 

      

 

                                   

 

 


TYPO 17