j carroll

j carroll Jan 2013

one night or midafternoon you fell asleep
and snored lightly in my ear.
i stroked your hair (it was longer then)
and thought of my love-lorn words
hijacked by this impermanent sleeper.

i started to laugh and you got lost in my chest
but you said it'd be "a good way to go."
and i heard the sincerity, cheap as silence,
like the first time you drunkenly called me darling
and it was steel wool exfoliating my atriums.

i would rather write about the frivolity
of a cigarette in a hot tub with strangers
and the absurdity of dripping sinuses
or a manifesto for the exasperatingly mediocre
but my words are full of you.

j carroll Jan 2013

summer

i sat free-wheeling by a lilac bush
and shook the wind with a sigh
and pricked my brain with a thorny thought
as a starry-eyed peace tumbled by.

j carroll Jan 2013

and/so/used to

she used to make me want to dance like sinewy frogs' legs doused in salt
so when i'm gone she could still steep my bones for soup.
and when my words tried to be music she'd curl a haughty lip and tell me
"oh really now, it's not your best work. it's not about me."
and i rubbed my calves together like a cricket before hissing
that you wouldn't want it to be about you.

i know the sound of her gait on the creaky steps in the oldest part of my house,
and i can recognize her scrawl on every scrap that says "i'm sorry."
someday i will be festooned with white feathers and i'll give one to her
and she won't understand that it's to mark a coward.
she used to spit at me with words that smelled like moth *****,
but when we cut her in half and counted the rings we found she was not so deep or ancient.

— The End —