One With Others [Not the mental lethargy in which the days enveloped her] Poem by Carolyn D. Wright

Not the mental lethargy in which the days enveloped her

Nor the depleted breasts not the hand that never knew

tenderness nor eyes that glistened

Not the people dragging canvas bags

through the ragged fields

Not the high mean whine of mosquitoes

Not another year of shoe-top cotton

No more white buck shoes for Henry

No peaches this year on the Ridge, and no other elevation

around to coast another mile out of the tank

No eel in L'Anguille

Not the aphrodisiac of crossing over

Not the hole in the muffler circling the house

Not a shot of whiskey before a piece of bread

Not to live anymore as a distended beast

Not the lying-in again

Not the suicide of the goldfish

Not the father's D.T's

Not the map of no-name islands in the river

Not the car burning in the parking lot

Not the sound but the shape of the sound

Not the clouds rucked up over the clothesline

The copperhead in the coleus

Not the air hung with malathion

Not the boomerang of bad feelings

Not stacks of poetry, long-playing albums, the visions of Goya and friends

Not to be resuscitated

and absolutely no priests, up on her elbows, the priests confound you

and then they confound you again. They only come clear when you're on your

deathbed. We must speak by the card or equivocation will undo us.

Look into the dark heart and you will see what the dark eats other than

your heart


The world is not ineluctably finished


though the watchfires have been doused


more walls have come down


more walls are being built


Sound of the future, uncanny how close

to the sound of the old

At Daddy's Eyes

"Pusherman" still on the jukebox

Everybody's past redacted