Robert Carr

after Octavio Paz Spring snows pink lips and you, beloved plot of dirt, take me to your lily-of-the-valley bed, rest my head on rising falls of flesh-drift and mudslide. I reach for your fumbling finger, you fill my gut with pebbles, roots. Lift me from your lowland, count half-children oozing from this body in the

Basin of summer on wrought oak dining table. A brick clay bowl filled with pits. The men around my table speak in baritones. Pleasure groans. (More important than words.) I’m smitten by the taste of cherries lowered into mouths. Spit. Sweet skins broken. Poison in sealed stones. It’s just after midnight. Rosiest fruit consumed, crimsoned

Unable to stand the year he was nine, stiff legs bent and hollow, my father had nothing to do but watch wisteria grow. Tendrils inched through cracks in a bedroom pane. Brass wheels slipping on a knotty floor. Beside the alarm – his aspirin therapy swallowed. At ninety-two he’s gray plaster. Turned to side, he