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carlisle@vidnet.net

Blues

I am listening to the Howlin' Wolf. I am
waiting for mother to drop out of my life. Under the luxe
green quilt that covers daddy, nothing stirs.

no words get down to the coffin
as last rites swell into my life, taking up all the cobalt air.
I am ready for her box to fall. I never am

primed for the instructions accounting for
every detail of her final day-impossibly jammed as she promised-
with inexorable weathers, achingly blue and lucid.

Who doesn't love a winter thaw? Who doesn't
when touched this way, turn into tears, into a pillar of salt,
morbid as the first smell of fall in August.

The Image

Passing the mirror, I look to see what
you might see if you found me out,

constantly judging and misjudging, my eyes
are your eyes, unimaginable lashes

my legs tangled with yours,
I touch my belly where you are still

on my skin
and surprise my mouth, about to say the words.

© All Copyright, Wendy Carlisle.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.