Ground, Wind, This Body

Poems

Tina Carlson

• Publisher: UNM Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780826357793
• eBook ISBN: 9780826357809
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

This debut collection explores the vestiges of war and the effects those can have on a family. Carlson excavates the personal experience of violence and abuse that follows a traumatized soldier home and also reveals veins of redemption.

Gloss and Silt

Ojo Caliente: Metamorphoses

1.

The summer was shattering.

Too much pressure and heat

change the nature of stone.

For this, we walk a dry path

under the spiraling flight of two eagles

disappearing into blue.

2.

The lightness of letting go is good to sink into.

Golden and afloat, leaves drift, sonorous

in their descent. We pass ancient villages,

small mounds along the stony path. Peaks

blue in the distance shimmer under snow.

3.

Along the trail, we look for snakes

in cool cracks of granite.

The magnitude of the day opens,

a way in. Mica gleams from dark caves,

flaked light, glass.

4.

Nothing lasts forever.

Even here, the gods of heat and water

break through red stone into steamy pools

of sulfur, arsenic, iron.

5.

A woman with cats on her socks wanders

across a bluff. Bodies are sanctuaries

of loneliness. We remember to look up,

find the fingernail of a moon.

What Is Buried Turns to Gloss and Silt

The more broken I become, the more

I find my way. Where are you,

now that I want to know? The blue

bedspread. Light and stained

wood. Myself as a girl.

My own hands

in my mouth,

fingernails bit

to the quick.

If only the bridge

of my ribs could

span the field

and all that is buried there.

The young hustle out of that place.

In time, the air is alive with pings and trills.

Riffing and shredding,

weeds sing in the wind.

The path I follow smells of pine.

You, Lover of Hills

Bones pale and smooth

as sleet. Hold my hand, you lover

of hills. Bent against stone that crumbles,

roots pull out with our touch.

The baby has grown her teeth. Thimbles

and thread make a path to the door. How

tenuously we are sewn to this ground.

Fruit in small packages. The world

with its sloped edge.

After you die, you are a young, pale

girl, thin hand cool in mine. I am

vigorous now, you say.

On Not Drowning

1.

The hospital room pulses

with tubes and pumped air

where she lies in her bed,

propped up and central,

the queen you have

always known her to be.

It is obvious

the medical team on her case

has given up because

they keep their eyes covered

and watch a storm forming on the horizon.

Look how they miss her bony arms

waving wide circles:

she is dancing with death, you imagine,

showing her stuff. You hum tunes for her.

You think if they would just loosen

the tubing and sheets

she might fly right out of that bed,

leave behind a tangled cape of blankets

and petals of blood.

2.

She swims and the water is cold—

a child on the shore

and forests swarmed by bees—

she treads through the bleed in her brain,

keeps afloat after vessels give out,

toward a girl, calling,

or is it a bird,

winging messages about dying,

the waves she will have to pass through,

to land where leaves rain from trees

and orange birds fill the sky—

she has never wanted

to leave you stranded in this pale room—

makes strokes big and broad

toward the girl, whose name she cannot remember.

3.

When the complications of thought

and speech unravel in her mouth,

she tells you how her arms were calling

the sad room of waiting.

How death was watery,

its buoyancy uterine,

how she was a girl

standing on a bank with trees and bees.

Or was it birds and buzzing branches?

How she heard you sing

across her ruptured rivers

and swam back into that sacred

cave of the hospital room,

the temporary harbor of you.

Equinox

Under traffic, a sparrow clings lightly to blue tissue,

scooped for its nest in the poplar’s bent, smooth body.

Wind pulses at the door all day. You cook meat

in a black kettle; its juices drool. My hungry body

left you in the dream of a blue motel. Empty-handed

you began to dance, sang a song for everybody.

When is a comet a simple blurred eye of dust

and ice? This woman lives in a blanket, is somebody.

She is always looking for home. Wind has helped,

and lovers. They appear in night’s deep body...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• War Is a Cradle
• Instead of Light
• Occupied Territories
• Gloss and Silt
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author