Dylan Carpenter: Would Be Garden
I tried not sleeping for a time at the kitchen window
open to the east
within this place there was another
not in the pasture where a spotted horse bobbed
between fence slats wound with wire
but across from me
I saw a small girl in a white dress
her eyes were shut
her dress so drenched I could make out her collarbones
do not cry like this again I said
here are the apples I᾿ve cut them how you like
my hands were empty and her eyes were shut
Psalm of the Addict
To forget the nerve—every one—that
served me,
I imagine, as the initial aim; that
and to rent a distance from you, from everyone,
one far enough
to keep the shame at bay. You
with your pouch of pearls, me and my retreat—
spent burning the earth
in search of night᾿s morphine, blood
in a silver chalice—did I ever stir into your ken
and may I ever
start over again? My hope, your
rough hands that sealed my temple
with the mark,
they are all another thing
I left in the lurch, one more hollow
I sealed up
like the cave, through which I made sure I᾿d never find my way
back out. Here I am, dropseed, all thought and only
ever thought.
My body, keeping nothing, is kept only
by longing; has learned the posture after knowing well
what hunger means.
Scabby kneecaps, palms, anything for another ring.
DYLAN CARPENTER is a graduate of Colorado College. His poems appear in Measure, The Tulane Review, and other journals. This past summer, he was a 2014 fellow at the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. More from this
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