02 Apr Poet Laura Carter

April’s Poetry

Laura Carter lives and works in Atlanta, and she is a native of the greater Atlanta area. She has published eight chapbooks of poetry, most recently After New Ambiance (Dancing Girl, 2018). She lives in an apartment with her two cats, Sasha and Sonya.

 

Friend

My friend says ocean

is opposite of industry.

 

Funny kind of cliché,

the way sincerity

 

gets traded for rust.

But who’s counting?

 

Every day, birds gather

in the same tree

 

behind my home: flocks

of them. They fly off

 

en masse. So what of

this ocean? An ocean

 

of wings? If it’s about

the text, then we suffer.

 

If matter moves away

from form, it’s true.

Friend (2)

One friend says desire

is the only thing stopping

 

anyone from sight. Somehow,

I want to believe this.

 

I’m no deer, but in summer

I curl up in the pages

 

of something fabulous. Who

are you to judge? Last

 

time I was a judge, I wore

my hair put up in a red bun.

 

It was pitiable, this judgment.

Maybe you remember?

 

In the world of thorns, only

a few are remembered for

 

their lives, but at the culmination

of a journey, what else is there?

 

Friend (3)

I want to believe.

Not necessary,

 

not expressive or

even the edge that

 

Joyce has over Molly.

Either gender can

 

fill either role. What

did you think, friend,

 

of absence as a synonym

for money? I never

 

thought about it for too

long. So I want to see

 

what the other side of

sun-shun is. Is it flowers?

 

I suspect that in the midst

of summer, something

 

ordinary will take form, but

only for the sake of

 

someone.

 

Friend (4)

 

After the deluge, I think

to call the boy back. Not

 

boy, but man, someone I shared

moments with, last week’s

 

friend—the first. I don’t

remember where I first found

 

the courage to write him, and

I know I am not an ordinary

 

tree. Someone preaches from

the corner of a story, and

 

tomorrow may be the way we

want after all. In the

 

last place I looked, I found

the number. But I couldn’t

 

write him. It would be

the wrong thing, an accident.

 

But isn’t that a beginning?

 

Friend (5)

 

You say, again, that citizens

are meant to tell the truth.

 

I want to believe you: the love

poem, the love letters. Every-

 

thing makes sense, for a time.

*

 

But I know too much.

 

In the interim, you save me

from dying. It’s like

 

newness.