Cindy Carlson

Two Poems

Petal Push for Please

Flower my neck storm day sunshine

but do it kind, do it love, or if not

love, do it chrysanthemum

or squeezed neat beds of tulip heads,

Saturday morning skin, instead

of this almost scream turn blossom

hold, where your elbow dug

and pushed down dirt, then rosed again

against my throat, kissless bright

but not so pleasely, do it daffodil

sun slip, instead of this whole pink

swallow, pressed stem bending

velvet breathful, magnolia tongue fall,

all over the yard.



Tongue: Interpretation

The moon is cow udders
          or a woman’s head
                    or a woman’s head
          is looking at the moon.
                       Blue isn’t this
          but some river train running
                       upside down sky
where the moon sits soft on a church
                       watching— Or is it a dome
          meaning temple, and the boy
drinking milk from a pink bellied bull is god—
                       He eats peas from a tin pail,
          like the rest of us, I guess.
                       The sky stays black here,
in Russia. Chagall loved his wife. The woman’s dress
                       or the body of begonias,
          open eyes like peacock feathers.

 
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