Kerry Carnahan
Devotion Road
Once I chased you with a death wish
Now I moonlight as
stormchaser
What does it matter if we were two women
woman and man, men or
what I believed:
an embrace so fluid as to elude
language
A dream locked out of time
Fear in a distant throat
*
The phone is held a distance from the ear
Words like never, never once to my satisfaction—
(but don't you leave
me as a lover?
or do you think
are you dreaming to
imagine
do you believe
your self
my superior)
*
Never, never once to my satisfaction—
Altitude of that pure white rage
sinking in
and I must know something about it
because I can hear:
an old man's silver handbell
blanging for coffee service and toothpicks
His spoon against crystal
shouting girls!
A fuel oil fortune
amassed during wartime
and a period of relaxed labor regulations,
heiresses talking radical feminism,
tennis, and the Important Thing
Being is to permit the workers their anger.
I know that sound
I wont jump to it again
In the high clear ping of that
perfect place
I hear a people with reserves of
deafening brutality
intimately lived out right
now in what this insane phone now says softly
in the prolonged massacre we call our history on this continent
in this waking in an abyss of my own making like a
monitor frantic with no signal
At last I understand the larger arrangement
why I have come here
and I thought you were this thing that needed my protection
will one day be the last thing I hear
*
07/01/07
That familiar sound, of a blow
As if something soft, dark & tight has exploded— popped suddenly in your head
The moments after. Did this just happen to me?
Familar sound, sting
Why?
I dont understand, why. I asked this years ago. And the years—
answer
And no I dont think I like that sound, sting—
where it—
on my face, cheek, neck, bruises on my arms, legs—
what is the difference
what is being fought, do I want to fight it, who am I
I fight myself
I dont want to say, no. I am not sure how to, plus I am
How mediocre this is
I am grateful for the company.
*
Well, none of this will crush my belief in
wildness
and as your memory grinds away
across the Smoky Hills
with it at long last go my final reasons
to be anything but unequivocal:
Ive been raped three times
Generations of silence are beaten into my shins and
obedience slapped into my face
Not a week passes some
man does not spit fucking bitch at me and
you and your hands among them
What does it matter
except a cry in the fields
Two shotgun blasts
I must shake
the ice off my breasts
I must learn to face it:
not one man was more intent on
obliterating
the truth of my life
than you /
each night
coyotes
coming closer:
this thought
*
I have no tradition to shelter me
No shade tree for cover
I have no water to return to
I have no water
But look, I have this one thing:
no water
*
Grandmothers I said spirit
grandmothers I said
grandmothers Im left with
no other word
cracked like an egg
held intact by a
membrane translucent
as my skin
the last page of
a book
My power is out
no light no water
I have no heat my phone is dead
Im in a white woods
None of this is figurative
none but the winter jasmine
thrives here
Snow piles in the windows
heavy and white as these blossoms but
odorless, odorless
as darkness
as a hot bitter
blossoming in this cold cabin
sixty white throats bulged with pollen
Three candles lit inside
of a mirror
the reflection of a flame is
steadier
Grandmothers
I have six white pills left
and the white ways are choking us out
I crush the pills
I swear
on what remains
can you hear it in my dry
bitter breath
Are you the shaft of ice light
screams through
my spirit
— 2014
