May 2020
Bio Note: I’ve lived in Tucson since 1953. My poems have appeared in such journals as
Carolina Quarterly, Barrow Street, Cream City Review, Rattle, and New Poets of the American West.
I’m a passionate supporter of Sky Island Alliance, a regionally-based environmental organization.
Thump
His burnt-orange t-shirt,
black letters above the image
of an AR-15, the slogan:
“quickest way to a man’s heart.”
I’d describe him, but why bother?
My shrink left town,
so I’ll ask myself myself, how
did that make you feel,
that T-shirt? How? Like
the other night when a sound
woke me, not the thumpety-thump,
thumpety-thump of the cats playing
but the thump-scrape, thump-scrape
of something dragging itself
down the hall to my bedroom.
Like that.
The Last Bumper Sticker
Do you believe in magic?
Sorry. I meant science.
Geospatially-stratified
random sampling? Field
specific conductance?
How about spheres of discharge,
multiple seeping sources,
climate refugia? No?
Then adjust your earbuds.
Here comes some extreme karst,
here come guest ethicists & their
favorite Boko Haram musicals.
“Adam had ‘em,” the first poem
about fleas. The first joke
about rabbits: “It’ll be fun,
wasn’t it?” The last bumper sticker:
“No jobs on a dead planet.”
(Originally appeared in Birkenstock Blues Rockford, MI: Presa Press, 2019)
Life Partner
For convenience, I & my life partner
(the woman formerly known as my wife)
have numbered our arguments. Number 3,
you’re so negative. Number 4, you’re
naive. Number 11, another beer already?
Number 13, you don’t listen to me.
But I do. I just don’t agree. Now
my life partner’s on the couch, watching
Live P.D. She’s pleased with the police,
so kind to the miscreants & trailer trash
they apprehend. Of course, they’re
kind! They’re on camera! Without
looking at me, she holds up three fingers.
My life partner wants to make a deal:
she’ll stop storing our broken pepper mill
upright in the spice rack, pepper everywhere
like coarse soot, she’ll store the mill
on its side if I stop switching off the light
over the dining-room table whenever
she’s in another room. Why? Why
does she need that light on all day?
She raises both fists & opens each one
twice. Number 20, you don’t love me.
(Originally appeared in Birkenstock Blues Rockford, MI: Presa Press, 2019)
©2020 Jefferson Carter
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