Three Poems

by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

About the South

Polka dots go there to be reborn under a dry sky

that revels in its deep knowledge of jay

and a carcass on the verge associates with vultures
under a storm of Kudzu vines, proliferating

as barn cats writhe and posture according to their calendar

and corn knows the tribulation of becoming hominy

where scattered tinfoil attracts a murder and its crows

as mamma fries the Sunday chicken, peppered,

dipped in egg and rolled in flour, fends off

rumors of Coon stew served with pone, the leftovers

fed to more than one kind of hound,

where  an honorific loves its Christian name

and the past settles on all of us like cotton dust on its picked field.

little prayer

Lord of the belly laugh

let me come to a silly old age.

     Let me cackle

     Let me chuckle and grin all day

Let me be sometimes in the company of the Marx Brothers

and the Roadrunner and Fat Freddy’s Cat.

     O Lord,

 if you love me, let me not be pompous or self-important

     (very often).

My Memoir

Some days my history is as unknowable to me as any stranger’s.  Clouds, a swirl of brilliance, tropical fish at my toes, the tall house darkening the Connecticut shore, its summer porch and stairs, rooms that questioned the sea.  Did I cry to be taken into grandmother’s bed?  Did she have one long braid?  In the harbor, a motor launch comes out to a pontooned plane.  Was there a shy first step into the rocking boat?  On the bleached boards of the dock, did fishermen turn an octopus inside out? I always had bare feet. The cook’s toes slapped behind me on the tile. Memory, unreliable narrator, you are no more to me than any desire, the shaping stone on which the best stories are honed.

 

Bio: Wendy Taylor Carlisle is the author of two full length poetry books and two chapbooks.

Read about her work at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com