Two
poems from Michaela Carter's Beauty for Ashes
followed
by a note on the author
Full
Circle
... and my daughters from the ends of the earth
– Isaiah
43:6
You
think them weak, the way they'd shatter
with pleasure. You think to protect
them –
to frame them in wood, or in metal, like
mirrors,
to shut them in cupboards like China,
these creatures of beauty
and light.
Perhaps
they are lithic by nature,
like marble hand-picked by the Master,
perhaps
they yearn for his chisel's blow.
You think what you have after they go
is
part of them. Apart,
you
think it's them, this kissed-crust,
something given. But how they long for
all
to fall – weight and blockage –
from
this thing they are becoming,
this thing in which they trust.
And
though you envy their distance,
though you'd write it into romance,
they've
only held fast to their core
as the Master turned the wheel,
felt a new
angle vulnerable,
the
next blow. Not to worry.
When your daughter has gone so far
she is unreachable,
she will follow
you everywhere, moon in your square
of car window, cities
streaming past.
When
We Speak of Love
We never
use it as a verb, not if I
is the subject and you the object. Instead
when
morning falls in bars of sky
or water blue across the bed,
you
close the blinds, pull me to your chest
and I slide back inside
the
dream where there are seconds left,
seconds before the stretch of low tide
is
gone with my breath, your heart, a clock,
a time bomb, as the wave crests,
black,
and
skyscraper high. We should talk –
discuss us
– I guess. But the wave's wake
is
a mile of water I am under,
a mile of silver, breathless wonder.
©
Born
in Phoenix, Arizona, Michaela Carter earned her BA from UCLA and her MFA from
Warren Wilson College. She lives with her daughter Hannah and her son Max in Prescott,
Arizona where she teaches poetry at Yavapai College. Her work has appeared in
New England Review, the
Southern Review, the Antioch Review,
TriQuarterly, and other journals.
"Full Circle" first appeared in the Southern
Review; "When We Speak of Love" first appeared in New England
Literary Review.
