Poetry

Spring 2008

 

 

Charlie Smith

Red Cotton

My wife's in the kitchen melting plastic spoons,
I'm out back
coaxing the cat out of a mincemeat pie.
Symbolically in these matters we're connected —
like captains on distant windjammers,
one on fire,
the other signaling for a second helping.

I smell of pecans — a slightly sour
odor like rusted license plates.

Lately, I like to drive around town in the notary's car,
the world's smallest. He kept a snake
under the backseat, but the snake died.
The remains have a dusty, old garbage smell,
and faintly, when I turn the corner, rattle.

I still don't know what kind of man I am.

I press my lips to red cotton,
red cotton panties, and sigh.

 

Rhymes and Songs

It's late now, December, a few trees
continue translating.
A menorah
holds up its little buckets of light.
An old woman with hands to her ears,
two homeless men discussing the nature of evil.
It's a clear morning.
Everyone's carrying luggage. There're gaps
between passersby, larger than usual.
The sun sets silver shields
in a row of window frames, all but one,
where a girl in a fur hat looks out.
Dawn riddled with memories
fading and dispersing among the trees,
fever subsiding —
you think, at last I can do what I want,
but mostly
you're building on the silence,
the solemnity of things left to themselves.
White limousine at the corner: an
intricate, depressed millionaire
trolling for a girl so beautiful
& frightened she might be enticed.
And a new life, arduous
and dire, commences.  Years
on a backcountry farm near one of the Great Lakes,
a bent for poetry, little rhymes
& songs
to soothe yourself
and children you've come to know.

 

 

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