Kerry Carnahan 

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Devotion Road​

 

 

Once I chased you with a death wish

Now I moonlight as

stormchaser

What does it matter if we were two women

woman and man, men or

what I believed:

an embrace so fluid as to elude 

language

A dream locked out of time

Fear in a distant throat

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*

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The phone is held a distance from the ear

Words like never, never once to my satisfaction—

 

(but don't you leave

me as a lover?

 

or do you think 

are you dreaming to 

imagine 

 

do you believe

your self

my superior)

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*

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Never, never once to my satisfaction— 

Altitude of that pure white rage 

sinking in           

 

and I must know something about it

because I can hear:

an old man's silver handbell 

blanging for coffee service and toothpicks

His spoon against crystal

shouting girls! 

 

A fuel oil fortune

amassed during wartime 

and a period of relaxed labor regulations,

heiresses talking radical feminism,

tennis, and the Important Thing 

Being is to permit the workers their anger.

 

I know that sound

I wont jump to it again

 

In the high clear ping of that 

perfect place

I hear a people with reserves of

deafening brutality

intimately lived out right 

now in what this insane phone now says softly

in the prolonged massacre we call our history on this continent

in this waking in an abyss of my own making like a 

monitor frantic with no signal 

 

At last I understand the larger arrangement 

why I have come here 

and I thought you were this thing that needed my protection 

will one day be the last thing I hear 

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*

 

 

07/01/07 

That familiar sound, of a blow

As if something soft, dark & tight has exploded— popped suddenly in your head

The moments after. Did this just happen to me?

Familar sound, sting

Why?

I dont understand, why. I asked this years ago. And the years—

answer

And no I dont think I like that sound, sting—

where it—

on my face, cheek, neck, bruises on my arms, legs—

what is the difference

what is being fought, do I want to fight it, who am I

I fight myself

I dont want to say, no. I am not sure how to, plus I am

 

How mediocre this is

 

I am grateful for the company. 

 

*

 

Well, none of this will crush my belief in 

wildness 

and as your memory grinds away 

across the Smoky Hills

with it at long last go my final reasons 

to be anything but unequivocal: 

Ive been raped three times

Generations of silence are beaten into my shins and

obedience slapped into my face 

Not a week passes some 

man does not spit fucking bitch at me and

you and your hands among them

What does it matter 

except a cry in the fields 

Two shotgun blasts 

I must shake

the ice off my breasts 

I must learn to face it: 

not one man was more intent on 

obliterating 

the truth of my life 

than you /

each night

coyotes 

coming closer:

this thought

 

 

*

 

 

I have no tradition to shelter me

 

No shade tree for cover

 

I have no water to return to

 

I have no water

 

But look, I have this one thing:

 

no water

 

 

*

 

 

Grandmothers I said spirit

grandmothers I said

grandmothers Im left with

no other word

cracked like an egg

held intact by a

membrane translucent

as my skin

the last page of

a book

My power is out 

no light no water 

I have no heat my phone is dead 

Im in a white woods

None of this is figurative

none but the winter jasmine 

thrives here

Snow piles in the windows 

heavy and white as these blossoms but

odorless, odorless

as darkness

as a hot bitter 

blossoming in this cold cabin

sixty white throats bulged with pollen 

Three candles lit inside 

of a mirror 

the reflection of a flame is 

steadier 

Grandmothers 

I have six white pills left 

and the white ways are choking us out

I crush the pills

I swear 

on what remains

can you hear it in my dry 

bitter breath

Are you the shaft of ice light

screams through 

my spirit 

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— 2014 

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