Laura Carter – Poems of Sensations and Memories

I pull away from the bruise. There is no bruise. It’s been said that language itself is a bruise, a collection
of things to be feared. There is no bruise. I put off the pain. The pain returns. The body burns, as if in a 
fire, largely having been heated in winter by the obsolete feeling of the no. There is no no. I pull away 
from the no. The no, not having been part of the story, can’t really comment on anything. There are 
no people. There are people. Someone lights the proper way forward, as if in modernity, and I pull 
away from that. Why go? Someone on the other side of the ocean would pen a marinade and drink it 
down for dinner. I eat. There is no food. I see. There is no sight. I put away the bruise. Then, all these 
things are and are not, yet more are than not, suddenly seeming so light, as if making me leave them 
behind to be freer.
 
 
**
 
 
I sit with the place. 
Removed: darts from the pierce & punch. 
The silence. 
 
* 
 
I move to the city. 
Embraced: time past absolutes, the froth of new desires. 
The noise and music alive. 
 
* 
 
Tomorrow, a reunion. 
To one side, a car & a bottle of wine. 
How did I learn to see? 
 
 
 **
 
 
I write the script: 
 
stage left = synergy while 
 
stage right is the path 
 
to the other side of the  
 
maelstrom. That’s right, 
 
son of right, the one 
 
with the rose in her teeth 
 
and the necklace made 
 
of slipstreams and the 
 
mapmaker’s iota of silk 
 
and ruse.  
 
Synergy? 
 
You ask with a pulse if 
 
you are allowed to join me. 
 
You knock. 
 
I think, 
 
but not for too long. 
 
 
**

 
In the Balance 

As love soothes me warm, I think of new words for things, almost in translation. The quince is gone. 
The dark has faded. “I think it’s not Christmas” becomes a way of glancing toward sea, almost entirely. 
See that bed? It’s not empty. See that peach? It’s eaten. See that cart of apples? Each one, weeping and watered, 
is out of the gate, summered. In the morning, he’s still there, but it’s not primitive. 
The lock may turn when emergency arises, but I prefer emergence and song, their quiet humming 
that takes threads and pretends at clothes. 
 

**
 

In the end of things 
In the beginning of things 
From where you were 
From where we meet again 
The rose is crushed by the lamb 
The lamb becomes the lion 
The lion becomes the lover 
The lover is pure desire 
You vilify his pure 
The rose is nothing if not nothing 
The body is almost broken 
The hand is on your belly 
His hand is below your belly 
His face is pressed to yours 
You hold his hand in peace 
You want to comfort him 
The lover becomes the friend 
The lover becomes the sister 
The lover becomes the friend 

***

Laura Carter is a poet residing in Atlanta, Georgia where she finished her grad degree in 2007. Since then, she has published about eight chapbooks, including three with Dancing Girl press out of Chicago.