Sunday, June 3, 2012

Three Poems by Cindy Carlson


If Emerald Could Be a Color a Sky Could Be

She peeled the wax back,
            from the museum statue
made string, hung bird whistles
            a single bed,
lay down boxes
            in a row of silver and traced
bears: polar and grizzly,
            realizing the sentimentality of
the color blue she
            called it Sunday, called it also
December, handed
            herself a cake made also
from something else.
            Cheer up she said, you
are Sunday, you
            are still—the sky also
turned something else
            not what she always wanted
not what she knew
            but erased and made
a scribbled red, just
            enough to say her place
and held there.


What to do with thousands of dead blackbirds; or that talk we had last Sunday

I’ve been sheen feather
sky, waiting to fly me
when starting they fall—
not float or all softly
two pounds of black: hard
on December. Blink eye and gather,
I pull bird to make body, in
wishness I teeter all edges then
over. Half light and hollow
like words I swing air, I swish
and toe tip, I flap and I fall—
fully for moments then
land all cemently, gaining
what always, they’ve known
all along.


Museum poem
           
Glass blocks attached only
by light to look through, changing
shapes, eyes to arms, I see you
like this: taking in color quiet
the walls gone/ escaped through
transparent then incandescent
we’re left in filaments, infinity,
held together with a knot
this room of strands and walls
(there again) holding what
has always been just breath
between words where our hands  
stutter and brush, a vibration
—the cubes are blue
and after hours they say
there will be a wedding—
       
the way the lake and wings are
fills my lungs with heat.



Cindy Carlson's poems have appeared in The Madison Review, Sentence Magazine, Shampoo, and other places.  She lives and teaches in Madison, WI where she also enjoys thinking about apple trees.