Before We Were Born

Carol Potter

• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781949944051
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

I admire the power of Carol Potter's dry, dreamy, country voice, its joyful sexuality, its insights, its understated humor. This is an odd and shrewd and most valuable book. --Jean Valentine

THREE

Rounding Up The Babies

Someone has rustled the neighborhood again, rounded up

the misplaced babies. I tell you, it’s easy

to misplace babies. They bolt at all the wrong times.

They run when they ought to walk, walk

when they ought to run. They climb into cars

with strangers, they forget

up from down. Look, this yard is empty; the gate’s

swinging wide all on its own. Time

to rescue the offspring, follow the tracks

of her tricycle: shoes, buttons,

little pieces of cakes…

*

I stand outside a ranch house. There are 31 tricycles

parked at the door. The ranch house

is short, dull, ordinary, like all the other houses

up and down the street. Ranch neighbors

lean from their drives. They nod at me:

“You’d better go in there. Something strange

has been going on.”

A ranch house.

I imagine babies inside ranging

or not ranging:

perhaps tethered, grazing

in the back yard, in between

the barbecue grill and the electric

brush trimmer. Perhaps a gracious, yet

misguided couple on two gracious horses

herding the tethered babies

around the yard.

“Happy trails to you, and to you…”

Some rite of spring? The Mr. and Mrs. teaching

the babies to dance

until they dance themselves undone?

The horses whinnying on command?

I knock at the door. “Excuse me, I seem

to have misplaced a baby.”

The couple is bigger than big

in their dark clothes, formidable

in their formal attire. Their mouths

are flat rocks in an ice-slick field.

I can see it won’t be easy

to tickle their desire, to make them

open the door and let me through.

I can see the baby parked beside

the kitchen door. She has grown old

waiting for me. Her hair comes off in her hands.

No cowboys in rhinestone array here, no trick ponies

dancing in a silver spoon.

The woman wears a black mink around her neck.

The man carries a long cane with a hook at the end.

I know the hook is for rounding up the babies.

I know the mink is for teaching these babies their manners.

Leaping for the Irnaginary Fly

Like broken wires after a storm,

the words hang, each puddle alive

with promise.

The favored things we danced around

grew empty and rattled. Their notes

scattered like ice across a frozen surface.

People rock on public benches, their mouths

silently sucking the past wedged in their cheeks

like dull bones that shift from side to side.

We thought the blood would make them speak.

I wash the rag in a cold stream and watch the red

swill across the plain. This water blossoms

incandescent in our bellies; sounds repeat

on a dead surface. From their towers, the new gods

tell us there is nothing to be afraid of.

They wave their dead over their heads

and shout, “Believe!” A tin bell sounds.

With good intention, the people cry, “Hallelujah!”

and drink. How did we end here with this gray sound

gumming the sky, the sickle-back singer

saying it’s just his job?

I run down the road wondering where

it went wrong. Rain pounds the tin cover.

Huddled in their houses, the armies babble:

“I was just taking orders!” I take my place

on the bench, shut my eyes, and in my dreams

a dark mouth comes out of the sky,

plucks those roofs and hurls them like hail

across the desert while the bare-headed troops

sink to their knees, clap their hearts together

and beg forgiveness. In this dream, a feathered sound

sails across the hills, presses her lips

to our mouths and promises a miracle to sprout

inside the skull, golden light to shine

from our tongues. Voices of crickets

lost in a cold dream, ring in my ears.

For these few hours with sun stroking their dark throats,

they shake their legs loose

and believe. I open my mouth to take the holy body

rattling a brown pod in a cold wind.

I am the fish leaping for the imaginary fly.

My skull glows like a jack-o-lantern.

My mouth opens and closes on a dry tongue.

There is only the sound of my hand

sweeping loose air, and dogs barking

that distant

whoop

whoop

in an early evening dark.

Bay Mare in a Second Floor Bedroom

In my dream of the last day, a large bay horse

followed me into my...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Note to the Reader
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• One
• Two
• Three