Firefly
I dabble in wings in variations of flux
Heraclitus is my friend everything in the world
is my living room I am not pretty
but let me show you my light
here I land on your fingertip
no no do not crush me
I fear the dark as you do
there are others I could have visited
the bombardier beetle the death’s head moth
a flying spider or two but
I like your shuttered home
it bristles with alacrity
on your wall the action-oriented Picasso
has your blended eyes & half your neck
shafts of a broken body after suicide
a vase old flowers bend as if
bowing to you prince or pauper
you write to save your life
to give everything a name
mine is Lampyris of Coleoptera
how’s that for a title well
it did inspire Heber in his tour through Ceylon
to say (tilting purple) that I light my lamp
of love (to put it mildly)
weightless I am with my multiple lenses
you not so much you are stuck
lumped curdled grouched grunged
hardwired three-quarters blind
I will teach you 16 ways to see again
through your nocturnal eye
you will see pieces of planets
crash of sunblades
you will sew up the stars
you will see through walls
of the universe long after
I have fallen on your table
but you will never
fly
Putin Rhapsody, with dog
My husband, the plein-air painter
has fallen in love
with V. Putin
No longer does he believe in words
in the tantric art
of dialogue
He is against linked, matched, mingled
googled, facebooked, niched
nooked
So Mr. Putin
Vladimir Vlad Vlad the Impaler
you have so much
your muscles & abs
(though they are not so pretty)
why rearrange the world
why annex my baffled
near-ended husband
though I suspect it’s your past glory
he covets
Lara, Lolita, the Karamazovs, Anna K
He speaks his pain his joy
only to a dog in silence
to an old dog
O Mittens
when it’s your time be a good dog
bite the Putin ( ma non troppo)
be an angel with wings
wide enough
fly with the birds of America
to the land of a thousand cookies
and one twitchy dream
at the end of days
who is to say we will not meet you
there.
To Adam
from Eve, who was framed
Listen, I was set up —
that snake from the circus
what a joke & the apple
it isn’t even macintosh
someone, certainly not my God,
planted a bunch of daffodils
& called it a garden
(probably the same guy who stole
your rib) in any case
I can’t remember if we did it
or not my memory
for carnal acts well,
forget it I understand
if you don’t want me back
but baby it’s cold outside
& I think I’m with child
of course it’s yours
there’s no one else on earth
& besides, we did have some good times
down the centuries you said
potato I said tomato
all those meals from the ground
up even the grapes of our wrath
turned to wine after dark
look —
we have the stars
why ask for the moon?
wouldn’t it be heavenly
if we could kiss
& make up
hey, who knows
it just might be
love
About the poet:
Gladys Carr’s work is widely published in literary magazines and journals throughout the United States and Canada. Publications include: The New York Times, Manhattan Magazine, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, North Atlantic Review, Denver Quarterly, International Poetry Review, Potomac Review, Bayou, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, California Quarterly (CQ), Connecticut Review, Fourteen Hills Review, Fulcrum: An Annual Of Poetry And Aesthetics, Existere Journal of Arts and Literature, Gargoyle, George Washington Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Inscape, Fictionist (Beach Magazine), Whetstone, KNOCK Magazine (Antioch Seattle), Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Nimrod International, Pebble Lake Review, Queen’s Quarterly, Westview, Qwerty, Red Rock Review, Rhino, Rosebud, The Saint Ann’s Review, Salamander, Sanskrit, The South Carolina Review, Southern Humanities Review, Spillway, Tampa Review, Word Riot, Bartlett’s Unfamiliar Quotations, and Quiddity International Journal and Public Radio, among many others.
Carr is the author of Augustine’s Brain – The Remix and coauthor of Edge by Edge (Toadlily Press). In the past seven years, she has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize.
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