Carolyn Guinzio

Three Poems
February 20, 2023 Guinzio Carolyn

[from] MEANWHILE IN ARKANSAS

 

GREEN AS A GOURD

 

Every time I try to walk
 
his hands shook
 
when he greeted the guard
 
Meanwhile in Arkansas
 
he was thinking about writing
 
about greeting the guard
 
those boats are sitting ducks
 
full of American owned
 
aren’t all jewels costume
 
because when you put them on
 
it doesn’t mean belonging
 
what do you call not placebo
 
you don’t believe the real thing
 
will come crawling out of it
 
doleful cat we left for two days
 
to weave around the moon
 
jellies stinging his hand
 
his hand shook when he read
 
about greeting the guard

 

 

OF ALL PLACES

 

When did you see your life
 
in a stairwell in the stars
 
take this it will calm you down
 
the only people I need are
 
a way to carry the unconscious
 
where are you taking it and can I
 
get a lift it is no longer punctuated
 
in the space between days
 
they made her film into a book
 
they made her book into
 
I would never dream of
 
a cat being carried look through
 
the ruins a ghost with the widow
 
his diabolical circling
 
helicopter rides fifty dollars
 
ten minutes Meanwhile in Arkansas
 
invisible eternity from up there darkness
 
only solid ground will calm me down
 
but now that we’re here
 
there is a rattling I liked the part with
 
the light: that was my favorite part

 

 

WE THOUGHT NOTHING

 

Of the plaque left to mark
 
a place cloud-to-ground
 
lighning struck the black
 
oak down because it called
 
attention to itself don’t
 
lure the human eye and if
 
you do wave them through
 
the four-way stop with a human
 
expression of fellow feeling
 
her advice was say I am
 
sorry I’m sorry and leave it
 
at that we are made differently
 
here differently now Meanwhile
 
in Arkansas the renamed
 
stretches of roads the exits
 
abound the radiating letters
 
glitter differently when memory
 
serves if it serves it stings
 
and if it stings the shells
 
of black walnuts take
 
pain down to littered ground

Carolyn Guinzio is the author of seven collections, most recently A Vertigo Book (The Word Works, 2021) winner of the Tenth Gate Prize and the Foreword Indies Gold Medal for poetry book of the year. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Nation, The New Yorker and many other journals. She lives in Fayetteville, AR. Her website is carolynguinzio.tumblr.com