August 2017
Jefferson Carter
carter7878@gmail.com
carter7878@gmail.com
I live in Tucson with my wife Connie and volunteer with Sky Island Alliance, a regionally-based environmental organization. I am also poetry editor for Zócalo, a local arts magazine. I'm an opportunist, not a poet with a plan. Whatever catches my fancy, I write about: an engaging image, a political or environmental issue, a bit of zoology, an overheard conversation, and, of course, love, love, love. In grad school, I fell in love with Jonathan Swift. Thirty years later, I still have to rein in my satirical impulses to protect whatever is tender in my poems. Diphtheria Festival, my tenth poetry collection, is now available from Main Street Rag Publishing. My new website: jeffersoncarterverse.com .
The Oral Tradition
for Steve
Sometimes, in conversation,
he’ll look away & say
I don’t want to talk about it.
I respect that. I really do,
but like some nosy Homeric hero,
I can feel the words piling up
behind my teeth’s barrier:
tell me, godammit! Tell me
everything so we can be friends!
I like to imagine the real
oral tradition, those epic
heroes, the Myrmidons, all
sitting around their cook fires,
gossiping, trading recipes, even
consoling one another as they
mend the horsehair plumes,
the helmets heavy in their laps.
(from Get Serious, Chax Press, 2013)
A Centaur
For laughs,
I imitate a horse,
lowering my bare shoulder
into the sand
of the arroyo, my wife
watching from above
& our son inside the blue backpack
watching while I roll, kicking
my hooves & neighing, husband
turned centaur, father
as some big animal.
The boy laughs
because his mother’s laughing
& I lurch to my feet, shaking,
blowing through my nostrils,
feeling foolish,
but what’s a family for?
Climbing back up,
I smell creosote & sage
& I understand the Greeks
who carried in their armor
a bag of spices
that smelled like home.
(from Get Serious, Chax Press, 2013)
The Mummy
Wrapped in my blue & white striped
100% Egyptian cotton bed sheet,
I skulk in the vestibule. What a word–
ves.ti.bule, the last syllable
like breathing on a mirror. I overheard
two girls laughing about their teacher
arrested taking out the garbage
in his underwear. I say more power
to him. I’ll say to those girls the night
I catch them, have a little mercy.
Mercy, a word that sounds
like someone swallowing flowers.
(from Litter Box, Spork Press, 2004)
© 2017 Jefferson Carter
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF