Two
poems from Holly Karapetkova's Deserts at Night
followed
by a note on the author
Parts
of Speech
Tomorrow,
I will build a universe
of ink, and write you subject to my pen,
controlling all you do and think in verse
and changing every loss of mine to win;
for instance, I could start with adjectives,
crossing out the old that I've become,
replacing dull with lovely; or I'd give
your careless words a turn to grateful ones.
And then for nouns-inscribe your apathy
as care with but a movement of my wrist,
to trade distaste for passion, transform me
into she, and thus by you as her be kissed.
Or better than this wordy love-retrieving
I'll simply stop all verbs, keep you from leaving.
Postcards
from the Field
No
roads.
It took us weeks
to get here, the sand dunes
kept shifting and our dollars meant
nothing.
Teshit
–
the driest place
on earth. It rains once in
a decade, and rain will cause more
harm than
good,
stir
the infertile
ground with stains of life, rouse
the locusts. Weeks ago, it rained.
Now fear
has
come
to those of us
who read the danger in
their changed color, have seen the sun
go dark.
When
you
touched me I felt
a thirst rising like sand
between my lips, desert I could
never
cross;
now
the thunder sets in;
I drink you like the rain.
When the locusts come they will leave
nothing.
©
Holly
Karapetkova was born in 1974 in Atlanta, GA, USA. She holds
an M.F.A. from Georgia State University and a Ph.D. from the
University of Cincinnati. She now teaches at Marymount University
in Arlington, Virginia, where she lives with her husband and
son. Her poems and translations have appeared in a number of
journals, including the Crab Orchard Review, The Formalist,
and the Marlboro Review.
"Parts
of Speech" first appeared in The Formalist, and
was reprinted in Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets (University
of Evansville Press, 2005); "Postcards from the Field"
first appeared in the Southeast Review.
