Two Poems by Laura Carter

In Andante

Slow honey: a new ellipse. Leaves are companionate as a tinge of dirt tints what’s seen. Dinosaurs went out of style, & then we fell through windows not of our own making, but different than what our parents would have wanted in former lives. A holiday’s you beguines with slovenly odes to El Greco & that painting I kissed when you weren’t thinking of anyone at all, but rather bearing myself in- to a new set of propositions that even a city would endorse for their properties & one last living Dino still raises his ace to love with a drink in hand as a holiday’s we is an end of knowing what art is for, once again. Temperance plates a day & no way is night relished like peach in a Buddha’s hand, pure palpable peach & in some world an emblem of my feelings. What’s new? A pop song marks out time & soon falls off again toward an infinite making.

Tangle

Held in bloom, a thing un-feels itself. What was once beautiful is now made of rope and salt, rope and bile. You want to reach out and tell your friend this: give yourself a second chance. But one thing is as good as another, for an other side to thing-hood is personhood, and not many speak of that. A glance in a mirror is made from yesterday’s clothes, not what was seen at first. Hand-me-downs allude to silk, and plaiting is un-velvet-ly pure. You reach in, and you find a second self, unhinged from death’s last grip.

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Laura Carter lives in Atlanta, where she completed her MFA in 2007. She has published several chapbooks since then, including three with Dancing Girl Press. She teaches college-level English and humanities classes for a living. She hopes you are well.