March 2018
I have work in such journals as Carolina Quarterly, Barrow Street, Cream City Review, and New Poets of the American West. My 10th collection, Diphtheria Festival, is now available from Main Street Rag Publishing. I live in Tucson, where I volunteer with Sky Island Alliance, a regionally-based environmental organization. I’m also poetry editor for Zócalo, a local arts journal.
STREP THROAT
I sleep in my son’s bed,
his comforter billowing
over me like meringue,
the poems of Che Guevara
under my pillow.
When my wife comes home,
she lets the dog in,
the dog who loves me
unconditionally. What did
Che call his apolitical friends?
Drunks, singing, their throats
about to be cut. The dog
loves me for myself, morose,
apolitical, the tang of penicillin
on my skin & he scuttles
down the hall, wondering
where I am, finally
wriggling the comforter
aside & draping himself
over my head like
someone’s flung beret.
-from Get Serious: New and Selected Poems (Chax Press, 2013)
© 2018 Jefferson Carter
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