|
UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY
|
|
CAROL CARPENTER
On Reconnaissance I spot one woman's coiffed head skewered on a fencepost beside an empty shack. No body. No extremities. Just a plastic head in this war zone jammed onto a rusted metal tube. I curse whoever concocted this atrocity, this violent monstrosity. It could be me with brown hair, flipped at the end and querulous eyes exposed in this mannequin's molded face. Like me, this dummy occupies a space someone else chose. Could she be a warning, a woman in a morality play who lost her tongue spying for the enemy? I cannot decipher the coded message painted in pink sunset on her lips turned up at the corners as if she knows the secret handshake for my safe passage through this bloody world where I must wear camouflage and streak my face with mud. The Rio Grande Gorge in Summer This is the season of suicide when young women leave their men alone without any offering, without even a note scribbled on lavender paper. Is it their words echoed by the owl: who, who who will find the open space tucked between red rock lips? Who has seen the stepping off, heard the pebbles crumble? Not you who reads the story twice. No you step back from that ledge from the gap-toothed grin of men who have nothing to lose, not even you. You would have left a letter with scratched-out words. Feet at the Funeral Follow the prayers. Cross and uncross. Re-cross four hundred legs covered with tweed wool trousers or taupe silk stockings tapered to toes rigid with reverence. Some legs encased in synthetic fabric waver and wrap one long limb around the other. This ancient dance choreographed: apart, then together. At the chord, tap the carpeted floor twice and move forward, caught up in long, tangled embraces. Their dance an offering, a sacrifice to distant foot gods. Their best guess at life. They rise in unison a morning glory vine in bloom. Heart-shaped bodies fill space along the pews. So many leaves. Each face pink, lavender, white and funnel-shaped. Upturned eyes above their open mouths. Ready for the preacher whose thirty mouths hang slack like wet laundry. His head droops on his neck, dangles above his feet in prayer. Shoes resoled and polished. A black shine beneath his robe. Now behind the pulpit. His hidden feet are flat against waxed oak floors. Rubber soles slide and stick, a squeak of music, his own refrain drains away. Spider veins wind around old women's ankles, streak their legs red. Break even as they unlace their shoes, knead flesh, swollen like some exotic flowers. Maybe magnolias or white orchids turned brown around the edges. Their corns, calluses, bunions throb to the tune of the preacher's prayers. Our Father, who forecast plagues and floods and death to all things on earth, does not wear shoes, does not have feet. Only His son washed disciples' feet clean of dirt, caked on thick from daily travels up and down the hours. They slipped on pebbles that cut through flesh, through leather sandals buckled tight against the day of one betrayal, one infidel. Today, friends, family, neighbors and complete strangers converge. They drag their feet across the sepulchral floor. They search for a foothold, settle for the static charge of nylon carpet fibers created by four hundred feet sliding. Through the valley of death, bent heads and withered vines. Small, tortured cries and whines. Amen. Amen. Amen. Carol Carpenter's poems and stories have appeared in numerous online and print publications, including: Margie, Snake Nation Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, Georgetown Review, Caveat Lector, Orbis, Arabesques Review, and various anthologies, the most recent are Not What I Expected (Paycock Press, 2007) and A Walk Through My Garden (Outrider Press, 2007). Her work has been exhibited by art galleries and produced as podcasts (Connecticut Review and Bound Off). She received the Richard Eberhart Prize for Poetry, the Jean Siegel Pearson Poetry Award, Artists Among Us Award and others. Formerly a college writing instructor, journalist and trainer, she now writes full time in Livonia, Michigan. |
|
© 2008 Underground Voices |
|
|