Wendy T. Carlisle: Two Poems

 

HE TELLS HER THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS IS: REGULAR SEX AND HAVING ALL HIS CLOTHES IN ONE PLACE

 

The couple with their sweaters tied around their necks,

pace a shore line thick with dulse and plastic wrack.

 

They throw their best selves, their secrets,

down onto black sand, the beach lit by the oily glow of rocks.

 

A vagrant, roused from public park sleep, catches

their morning passage, shuffles past to shatter

 

the slack tide with an arc of piss.  The couple scuffs

the kelp, gripes about beach debris, punctuates

 

their chat with busy thighs and knees, a limber stride.

They laugh; stir up the gulls. They’re loud.

 

He tips his head, struggles to explain the unfinished

novel, flawless wife, closes with whispers

 

of the Shangri-la they could inhabit with their little passion,

their one closet, all his shirts and suits.

 

 

ANOTHER SUMMER ROMANCE

i.

a fiery question: takes four moths to answer

cool at the edges, toss and swelter at the center

 

Armageddon in the cow ponds

too hot to rest on

 

needs key lime, fresh beans

lives behind plate glass

 

in movies for the chill kaboom

in short sleeves, in linen

 

in dust that rises up behind a truck

in the skim of sweat in an armpit

 

with grit, belly flop, tide line,

tan line, wet curl

 

closer to the wire and the sun

the soles there burn like saints on fire

 

ii

 

Survival depends on ice cream

and the speed of the post-vernal whoosh

 

that slickens a forearm

like honey; it manages the slide into Gomorrah

 

and Sodom’s flame; it stays out

of the thick breeze, ripe as a peach going rotten.

 

Nevertheless, it is the where chocolate

melts in your hand.  Afterward, don’t look back.

 

The dead are nothing to the quick.

Too savory.  Too solid.  Pillars of salt.