After Mother Dies, Most Men Need a Lover
-first published in Rattle
Father’s lover sits
on the paisley sofa
where my mother
rested before she went
to bed and died.
It’s been sixteen years
since the water ran,
since my mother refused
to get out of the shower
because hot water
felt so good.
In the intervening time
my father’s lover has lost
her mind. She says
the most beautiful things.
Today she said,
I know I love you,
but I’ve forgotten your name.
From the VA
-first published in Shenandoah
The woman has stopped screaming
Ma…Ma…Ma… across the hall.
He can’t get a break from the sack of gas
that snores behind a shared screen.
The mounted TV just declared
the country’s dead. He’s sick. Throws up
warm water, presses nurse’s buttons,
gets ignored. He flips a tray to the floor,
makes noise someone might notice.
He uses bed controls to sit up straight.
Outside, red and white stripes twist
and waver. A tattered fly end of the flag.
Through caulked window cracks, he listens
to snap hooks clanging on the halyard
against the VA flagpole. High wind, a dust-
cloud, the Commonwealth blue shield,
white field, whips beside Old Glory.
Who hasn’t he told to drop dead? From the metal
of his bed the flags are all half-mast.
He hasn’t seen his children since the snow.
Cage
– first published in Amaranth, a chapbook published by Indolent Books
Did your green eye look for my brown eye –
as your life, your unchecked watery shit, ran out?
Did you wonder where I was? Did your thumb
slide the mortared groove of a cinderblock wall,
remembering, through thick paint, the living
line of my jaw? Did your breath break,
as mine does now, knowing you were wet,
alone, caged – not in my arms, not under my whispering
hand, counting your ribs, slowing your heart?
– first published in Hole in the Head Review
Toward Rumford, on the way
to ultrasound my pelvis,
I drive the banks of Androscoggin
pass the desperate papermill.
Pulp gas rises in October,
pine trunks, stacked high,
give up growth. In a low-lit
basement level room, I sense
stomach cells splitting. A nurse
named Andy lubes my belly.
This should be warm, they say.
Sliding through, Andy points out
morning coffee, a bubble traveling.
That dark line, that’s an artery.
There’s something unknown
in my bowel. Back home, I stew
in outdoor dusk, a woodfire
burns me warm, my rocker creaks
and soothes. Overnight, my favorite
maple’s dropped buff leaves
and stands, an x-ray of itself,
branches like nerve endings
silhouetted against hemlocks.
There are pleasant outcomes,
the leaves have no regrets.
This tree I love is young, and so
far from the stink of paper.
Breaking the Fever
The tender of your reflection
inverted in chrome
as a kettle boils
I drape a warm towel
over the newel of your head
a steam rising
A robe has puddled
to reveal the wing bones
of your fever
The gel cap foils
have bulged and broken
torn by a stainless fork
Before turning to poetry, Robert Carr administered infectious disease programming with The Massachusetts Department of Public Health. He is the author of Amaranth, published by Indolent Books, and two full-length collections published by 3: A Taos Press – The Unbuttoned Eye and The Heavy of Human Clouds. His poetry appears in many journals and magazines including the Greensboro Review, Lana Turner Journal, the Massachusetts Review and Shenandoah. Recent teaching engagements and residencies include Monson Arts and The Millay House Rockland. Additional information can be found at robertcarr.org
Beautiful work. I am inspired.