Wendy Taylor Carlisle: Two Poems

Tragos | Accustomed to Water

Tragos

They say about goats,
they’ll eat anything.
But that’s not entirely true,
since there are
whole food groups
they avoid: hubcaps,
munitions, Molly Hatchet 8-tracks.
You can listen for a goat hymn
in the clatter of rocks,
in the sighs of a woman,
buried to her neck
in Nigerian sand.
And sighing in the long vowels
of her name,
a goat chorus that urges us
to a dusty field, tells us
we can lie down
and the song
will enter us like a stone.

Accustomed to Water

Today they found the spot on mother’s lung
and Bin Laden appealed for more suicide bombers.
The alert status is Orange. The spot is round as an orange,
although the doctor doesn’t say what color it is. On the round
earth where our bodies are accustomed to the courtesy of water,
civilians flame up like pine needles, leaving their children
asleep beneath electric fans while a light breeze, destined for
a soldier’s head, seeks his quick translation into a prime number.
On an army base, the men are told death is a progression:
agonal phase, Cheyne-Stokes breathing, maybe seizures.
What else are they told? It’s the same news we listen to at home —
CNN says that death is the bomb. But there’s no TV in perdition,
only in hospitals and it’s our nature to require grace
we haven’t earned — a clean X-ray, an end to the show.

Poet's Biography:

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in east Texas where she writes & reads poetry. Her most recent publications include a chapbook, After Happily Ever After, available at 2River.org, poems in poetrymagazine.com and Salt River Review, and a review of Annie Finch's CALENDARS in The Cafe Review.