Systems

Perhaps the only aversion is the love
at the end of them.
Still I need them; still I construct Canada
and France in parallel circuitry

and still I understand
their receptions as a child understands his lessons and listens, listens hard.
But what is left of the tractor?
Who will pull the teacher back to the city noises?

Maybe it was deductive.
There’s a story of a man and his wife building
a house in the mountains. He was abyss,
she was sharpening the knives in case an intruder should

come. He revived the story of the jewel case.
She was extra diegetic to his tale,
walking around the kitchen in a tall coiffed beehive,
spinning atoms out of the greenest pool.

But he took to the highway.
Eventually, youth does the same. Why so solemn? you
might ask. Are you down to your last dime yet? Did
you read the same story and ask

the questions I asked? Possibly.
What did you do with your wheel? I wanted
to build a superhero from mine.
After the pageant just a French song.

I stepped forwards and then back.
The river was too wide.
I constructed a couple of bridges.
They are still sleeping in the same bed with the silt.

Maybe it was the syringe in the fabric that time.
How many pages do you have
of your own? How many mirrors do
you throw over the toweled

water? I stepped back and then
forwards. That’s a big leap,
when I was listening to my poetic
voice. That’s what makes it too secret now.

The love at the end of the systems, what is it?
Do we ever stop making them?
I will tell you a little something
and it will not be at the opera. It already happened.




Strategy: A Story

Holding on to the exhaust pipe
a man found a rainbow
underneath a pot of gold. “Let’s see
if I can make a book of irises,”

he thought to himself at the train station.
Either that or the rain was falling into buckets
aware of the rain in the Town of Rain.
In the back seat the drivers were ladling

imaginary steering wheels
and the town inside his dream
of labor was something from last century.
In the front seat the drivers looked out

metaphorical windows at metaphor
with the wistfulness of adolescents
under green beds wearing leonine-angled sunglasses.
“Let’s see if I can make a performance

from this bucket of soup,”
and the man portrayed
his adjectival wisdom as a crux.
The children on the laps of kings were visually interesting.

It’s possible to be popular
yet this implies naked.
It’s possible to be a suffix
yet the rose at the heart of the story is a double.

One suffix piled up in the book of irises
is sufficient to make the rock in the cradle
an analogy. Someone’s in the kitchen
taking pictures of the music. Someone else

is taking off sheets of bedrock from the poetry
that’s left. And what about the leaning towards?
It’s a shabby gesture but a necessary one. “Let’s see
if I can make a poem from flowers and weeds.”

There’s no brightness in that. But no dark either.




Strategy: The Mix

You write a line, I’ll write a line,
      and then we can come up with something other
or else our beautiful pastiche will
      fall through the ceiling: hope.

You write a line, I’ll write a line,
     and then the kissing otters
holding hands on the screen will praise our working be-
      side each other.

You write a line, I’ll write a line,
      and then the Delacroix
muse sending out cathode rays in the fire
      with set limits for us both.

You write a line, I’ll write a line,
     and the pigment in the mountain
book will turn colors with the leftist jab
     of both of our bright elbows. Ole!

You write a line, I’ll write a line,
     and then we can say that the operagoers’
book is no more than an axiom
     of stories told and yet untold.

You write a line, I’ll write a line,
     and then we can both be together someday.
Circa 1980 in the woods is
     so non plus. I’m standing there now.

You write a line, I’ll write a line,
     and then we can stop playing in the field
where the ladders start. I’m addressing questions.
      Don’t make your answer yet.

You write a line, I’ll write a line,
     and then the sonnet will still be unrhymed.
So joy of the fable not poured into the mold of sound.
      Oh wait! I forgot to ask.

You write a line, I’ll write a line,
     and then we can turn. A change is
more than a turn. Representation is
      ideal phenomenon.

You write a line, I’ll write a line,
     and then the things we don’t know will come together fine.
I address you as a question, darling. You make me sing.
      You’re the ladder.




Stratagem

Wonder at the camera
      behind the precipice exact
           epigraph in the book of a love
                sitting at table
           listens to opera
                listens to my body
                breathing in the big armchair
           over the precipice some othered body
      waits for a plane a hover a gospel story
the radio is all salt
      and the movie is not
a good one

      Wonder if
all the books about cameras
tell the same beestung story
and whether the hummingbirds eat the soup

Wonder whether the architect
      could construct me
      with his bare hands
           wet from his love’s

body from my body the scrawlings are
      tattooed like a new language
      and the body
           itself fits the sleeve

      Wonder whether the gym
      its slanting organon

           of orchids and shimmering
      political retractions

      could tame the ferocious
      diamond at the heart of the story
           tells

      itself in spite of me












Laura Carter lives in Atlanta, GA. Recent work is forthcoming in The Modern Review. Her blog is http://lauraderives.blogspot.com.






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