All Twelve Acres of the Rockefeller
Center are Dark Tonight
To call a beetle boneless
is to be technically correct
but annoying. It is not
first date behavior. Outside
the club it’s raining atoms.
A dog steals a sodden
biscuit then slurps from
a discarded wingtip. Steven
is in the bathroom rinsing
a stamp from his wrist:
he wants to step out
for a smoke and never
come back. He treats love
like a counterfeit bill he
needs to move but knows
he shouldn’t. He was excited
to rent a house close
to the zoo but discovered
it was the modern type,
always turning wild pigs
into peccaries.
Beam Me Up, Buttercup
When the sky is uncongested
we let our hair down.
We steam florets of broccoli.
We eat colorless bowls of rice
where forks disappear.
Soon we only see
what a gourd can see.
A gourd’s light is external.
In deep space nothing
reflects from the gourd
and nothing reflects from us.
We try to make the gourd blink
and it mocks us for trying.
At least we don’t give up easy
as aspens, which cede too much
yellow. We are dim satellites
orbiting a mute vegetable.
We’re not as unique as we sound.
We have decent vocabulary
and a craving for gyros.
Oh, and the radio. So tell me,
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
biography
BILL CARTY has recently published in Poetry Northwest, Octopus, Hobart, and Sixth Finch, and his chapbook Refugium is available from Alice Blue Books. He is the Seattle editor at Coldfront Magazine, a recent fellow at the Richard Hugo House, and a current fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.