August 2020
Bio Note: I have poems in such journals as Barrow Street, Cream City Review, and Rattle.
Chax Press published Get Serious: New and Selected Poems, chosen as a Southwest Best Book of 2013 by the
Tucson/Pima County Public Library. Presa Press has just released my eleventh collection, Birkenstock Blues.
I live in Tucson with my wife Connie. I’m a passionate supporter of Sky Island Alliance, a regionally-based environmental organization.
I live in Tucson with my wife Connie. I’m a passionate supporter of Sky Island Alliance, a regionally-based environmental organization.
Self-Hatred As a Poetry Prompt
My favorite asana?
Happy baby.
My fatal flaw?
Being a baby.
My ex-shrink, who
didn’t like me, asked
“why is everything
always about you?“
Why? I thought
the question rhetorical
or even therapeutic.
It wasn’t.
In “Feels Like Rain,”
Buddy Guy sings, “Button
down the hatches, baby….”
It’s “batten,” isn’t it?
Well, isn’t it? I’m like
the dying grammarian whose last
whispered words weren’t, “O,
infinite” but “O, infinitive.”
Butterfly
I’m the man
without a plan.
As our guru says,
don’t just do
something,
sit there!
Consider
the Butterfly Effect.
We could have
sex this afternoon
& feel more than
the earth move.
We’d change
tomorrow’s history,
the Great War, the greater
war, the greatest war.
©2020 Jefferson Carter
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