September 2021
Bio Note: I live in Tucson with my wife Connie. I’ve had work in such journals as Carolina Quarterly, Barrow Street, Cream City Review, and Rattle. I’m a passionate supporter of Sky Island Alliance, a regionally-based environmental organization.
Hot Tub
I confess. We own
a hot tub. Nothing
ostentatious, room for three,
modest gray plastic,
set at 101 degrees, poorly
maintained (pH? What pH?),
but a stone blessing
when I startle awake
at 3 in the morning, my fingers
cramped into claws.
My tree-hugger friends
lecture me about my hot tub,
such self-indulgence, such
waste. I think about them
as my hands flower open,
as the steam rises like smoke
through the branches
of our invasive olive tree.
Report From the Mothership
Imagine your teeth
from an alien’s point of view.
Weapons-grade collagen?
A tiny race’s graveyard?
Its word-horde inadequate,
the alien googles poems
about teeth:
Basho: “Teeth sensitive to the sand
in salad greens—
I’m getting old.”
Shakespeare: “Blow, thou winter wind. . . .
Thy tooth is not so keen.”
Herrick: “White as Zenobia’s teeth, . . .which the girls
Of Rome did wear for their most precious pearls.”
Strapped to a gurney,
you watch the alien log off,
its shadow crossing
the brushed steel mirrors.
Imagine your mouth
from its point of view.
Your tongue, a pulpy lure.
A Better World
In a perfect world,
cats would bark.
In this world,
the Colorado River’s
dying, the Lower Basin states
going, going, gone.
A friend told me
his grandfather used to
chant these words:
“Nïltsabaká yasóni si dahazlágo adïsní`”
(Male rain, beautiful, me
it will come to, I say.)
“Nïltsabaád yasóni si dahazlágo adïsní`”
(Female rain, beautiful, me
it will come to, I say.)
A better world?
Someday, an old white man
like me will seem exotic.
©2021 Jefferson Carter
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