I hope it doesn’t look like a ruse,
a fairer commerce, into
the anthro topic of ash and grace,
ash as the edge of what we wear,
no one counting the slanted time,
may you live in interesting times
as the curse reads, no singing
allowed but I love you anyway,
the crevices are not deep in this find
which is allotted to alternates
so if we find each other again
the meaning is missing, museum
faded, my heart a raid of flowers
almost resting, this autumnal weather
*
no ruse can eclipse night skies that
seem, the way a night ride home might,
gone too soon, the clock a wonder left
to children, vagrants, the women at
the bar, left to us to puzzle over,
hands unheld at hours’ length, never
mind the system we kept saying fuck
the system about, but which system was
it, and for how long would anyone
remember its works and days, the willed
automaton at its center pried too easily
from the sky, the edges in abeyance
because what else could we do but hide
there, far from the tapes and the hegemon
*
there was nothing left of the sun
but a bare radiant structure, some might
say, the pull of ruse an unruly trick
that we could borrow from them but why
bother, not the earth that the cardinal
points left out but the hands in the dirt
type of earth, that’s what we found
while not looking for anything in particular
or while removing guardrails, which we
were ambivalent about, the structures to
remove, the barricades to cross, the
letters to send, I’m sorry to say we had
had it with alphabets, their soupy
exteriors, our own worn hands leaving
*
are all exteriors ambivalent? I need
to know about the effort it takes
to part water, not in any biblically
sensitive type of way, but other than
centered, self-assured, stations of
last year’s magical cross, as uncertain
as acts built together, when we can’t
change anything without leaving it,
the truth can only be honest if the wind
dies, some might say, hollowed forces
vanquished, finally surrendering to zero,
no one is extra-cautious just because
there are fragile beings around, which
is a problem the guardians have been
trying to solve, and we are the guardians too
Laura Carter, an Atlanta native, lives in Decatur, Georgia. She has published numerous individual poems, book reviews, and chapbooks, including four with Dancing Girl Press. A further chapbook, The Indisciplines, is forthcoming from above/ground press. She hopes you are well where you are.
