c.s. carrier / two poems

Ljubljana

the sky was blue the way some blue things seem 

lit from within we made our way down Miklošičeva cesta 

from the bus terminal turned right to find the poet

Tomaž Šalamun’s house then came to Prešernov trg a square 

to honor France Prešeren there was Prešeren the poet there 

was his love his muse hovering overhead we stopped to 

soak it in it let us catch our breath 

it was hot the place fantastic / shot through with people 

on the make they took pictures we took pictures

we took the Tromostovje bridge across the Ljubljanica River followed

along the river people sat under umbrellas they ate sladoled

potica & pub food they drank zganje & craft beer

we sat with some new friends they asked about our 

home we asked about theirs what do you love what

do you dream what happens when your language & land

meet they said go to Lake Bled the water’s loaded

with glaciers we said we’re going tomorrow we’ll pour it

on our heads let it open us at the market

people bought flowers fresh cherries milk I bought books Dih 

& Sončni voz by Tomaž Šalamun maybe to translate them

someday I bought silver earrings for Dawn for our anniversary

we fell in love padlocked it to Butcher’s Bridge tossed

the keys into the river because that’s what you did

old dragons blew their green patina everywhere in the park

two performance artists pulling red suitcases parodied tourists

a theater troupe donning masks clowned children aerialists gathered in

silks allegoried through the blue lights through timespace we made

our way up the castle paths ate dinner al fresco 

native marble trout from the Soča River orange wine from 

Goriška Brda night fell around we rose into the dark

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Coming to Terms

We looked at the stars against the night & we saw flattened bulls & serpents & we saw crowns & ladles & we saw holes & pins & flint & salt & we saw violence & memory & we saw ourselves reflected back so close to death (APPEARANCE)

We lived in houses built with bulldozers on top of salamanders & we lived in cities under clouds with dumpsters & we lived on fertilizers against tissues & we were interconnected & we were inescapable on both sides of the windows (ECOLOGY)

We learned to stand beside each other & we learned where to stand & how & we came to understand that windows rattled & floors creaked & we came to understand how the smell of coffee wafted room to room (EMERGENCE)

We ate cornbread made with Cherokee blue corn & we decorated weddings & funerals & reunions with the pork & red slaw & hushpuppies of Carolina barbecue & we ate seared sea scallops on the water in Stonington & we ate purple hull peas & chocolate gravy in the Ozarks & we ate & danced at Zydeco Breakfast in Breaux Bridge & we ate the food of love (FOODWAYS)

We spoke with words & we spoke with walks through the museums & picnics on the beaches & we said what we did not mean & what we did & we came to a place without hope & we came to each other in a place without hope (GRAMMAR)

We bought a house on a residential street in dry Arkansas lost to dreams & we decorated the walls with art & filled the rooms with herbs & beers & expensive cheeses & cat trees & we looked through the windows & there was a mulberry tree ripe with fruit & a lovebird shrieking in the limbs (HOUSE / HOME)

We were our identities & we were webs of discrimination & privilege & we were able to borrow money for a house & we were able to survive traffic stops & mass shootings & hypertensions & we were taught we could go wherever & this place was made for us & we were taught we could say whatever (INTERSECTIONALITY)

We played Scrabble beside the water on the Bookmill patio & we played music loud enough to dance to & dream to & we played in the oceans & the forests & we played with love & growing old in darkness (LUDOLOGY)

We slept beside blue water & thunderstorms & foxes yipping & we drove the roads that wound with the rivers & we cut across cotton fields & recognized the gravity in them & we had boiled crawfish & we avoided the alligators basking across the asphalt & we were in the bayou & it was tidal in our throats (MEMORY)

We collected shells & coins & we collected seeds & liquors & we brought everything together in jars & books in a cabinet & we built a hearth around them & we looked at images of ourselves to remember how we have changed (MISCELLANY)

We went wherever & we ran into the Angel of Corium & the Angel of Polyethylene & the Angel of Hydraulics & their kith & kin & we could not get free & fie asbestos & teflon & fie scorched land & charred bones & fie prophesy & débâcle (NECROPASTORAL)

We grew up with go green, breathe clean & no pollution is the only solution & then some bullshit about making America something or something again never mind that it had yet to be made so in the first place & then there were words to shape death around like my dad was under the weather before he passed on on a Sunday morning (SLOGANEERING)

We became homesick & shadowed over & it was nothing like the homesickness & shadowed overness we made for others & we filled with acid & we chanted in the streets & watched teargas we had cosigned for rain onto the heads of peace & we knew there was no place like home & that this place was no home like the one we had promised & had been promised (SOLASTALGIA)

We wondered about the relationships between stones & words tools & holograms rice & rice & we wondered about risk investment & autotheory & about marriage & children & about how we wanted to live & how to do right by the future & so we wandered about the wilderness & cities & the Venetian canals & the Borgesian libraries (SPECULATION)

We made the land around us & in our representations thereof & we crossed invisible lines bedecked with oaks & blue grass & diamonds & fleur-de-lis & we moved between states to build out who we were & what we were capable of (TOPOGRAPHY)

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C.S. Carrier earned an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a PhD from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Carrier lives in Indianapolis, IN and co-founded the NIGHTJAR Poetry Series.