Poetry by Gary Carter

Gary Carter’s latest novels are Not Dark Yet and Snake Bit. Based in North Carolina, his poetry and short fiction have appeared in Nashville Review, Sky Island Journal, Deep South Magazine, Real South/West, Steel Toe Review, Santa Barbara Literary Journal, Dead Mule, Delta Poetry Review, and Main Street Rag. A former journalist, he also contributes nonfiction pieces to a range of print and online pubs, as well as selling a little real estate on the side. Visit gecarterwriter.com.

Memory Dredged Up 

After Viewing  A William Eggleston Photo (Biloxi 1972)

upon a time once
a red haired girl possessed me
a lissome long limbed creature
a thousand freckles splattered
across snowy flesh soft as silk
with unruly crimson curls streaming
to her waist & i remember best
it rippling in summer breeze
glint of sun turning it fiery as we
sat naked hip to hip by the old pond

so long ago now
she’s hazy except for her hair
pale ghost rising unbidden from memory
face soft focused to mystery
but one image still crystal clear
of her flaming bush breaking the water
as she floats lazy on her back
that cinnamon girl buoyed by
spreading net of cherry coils
as day-moon fades backward into blue

Blacktop Mystery

a brooding golgotha
haunts a nowhere stretch
of rutted country road

six weathered planks
cobbled together
by unsure hands
penny nails rusty & bent

three crude crosses
crucified against gnarled bark
of sistered saplings
congregated hard by the blacktop

a sign ? end times ?
a message ? he is risen ?
a revelation ? jesus saves ?

or merely mysterium tremendum
that fearful mystification we can
neither fathom nor face

A Small Coffin

nothing
is more difficult
than a small coffin
pure white
so tiny a single man
can lift it gently
bear it out of the gloomy church
out of the sight 
finally
of a young mother
stark raving with grief
face so ravaged & grim
you cannot look directly at her
for fear you’ll be consumed
by terrible sadness 
radiating from her 
a red-hot force that will blister
your eyes grip your heart
like an iron fist
 
she cannot 
will not be consoled
not this day
not another day
not any day
ever
because nothing 
is more difficult
than a small coffin.