"I left one eye behind, wandered down..." from "Morning After Halloween"

Kerry Carnahan

I left one eye behind, wandered down

to fields I didn't plant on land I don't own,

out north the limits of my heart, I saw

rows of flutes already snapped off, broken night-

sticks jutted crazily out of hard furrows

but the corn I didn't recognize . . .

now under a wrong bridge I am night air

dying to get tongue kissed

where our shadows jackknife. It's wild raspberries

my embryos sort of resemble as they drop to soft earth

one by one, while I grow hotter in failure

resembling a star. Slip

out this ancient military coat of grief with me

like a child done with dress-up

and that coat falling from your body evaporates into no

coat worn by nobody, but that child's a deer

disappearing into snow falling on branches. It's

an important failure, Dubya H might've wrote,

that I can't shake, shivering as we are, half a million

before the UN at noon February 15 2003,

zip-tied on a curb unwipeable sweat stinging our eyes

on August 31 2004, smashing out Military Science

windows on May 6 1969 in a college town, last

Monday rinsing nerve agent off a stranger's mucus membranes, I

don't presume to live happily,

nobody I know does, people are dying, brother's

marriage a shambles, friends made refugees

and who with credulity could blame any soul thieving a

fentanyl vial for a few drops of absolute peace,

poets got nothing on pharma. Oh

I don't know anything. Rudy Giuliani's

been busy, likes of sure wasn't farting around

in my brain, boy I tell you place

looks like cattle feedlots what with it manned

and barricaded any which way you turn,

sometimes a dream comes unkettled it's a miracle, then there's

dreams fought their way in, by now place seems— differnt,

but differnt like Leo first learning that word: "diff-rent" well

guess that's not differnt, in-laws taught him, maybe's

embarrassed how we talk already but

it's like sun's coming up in his voice and baby that's a

definition for you, and oh sweetheart maybe too

you'd like to behold livestreaming heaven in somebody's face

tad bit more often, I knowt's hard to

get a signal, I feel the reception very poor

right now. Sad how Dorothy Gale

when she feels trapped heads straight for the corral,

now tell me— if I really want to get free do I go

pissyass singing about rainbows n corraling my own damn self?

Oh now there I go shitposting my own lyric

anyway what's the take on Dorothy,

conjure of Gilded Age génocidaire L Frank Baum

who as a boy at Rose Lawn each night prayed to Jesus

his soul to keep, closed his eyes and was

strangled by cracked ragged hay settler childern in fields

smoking with shell casings and corn husk guts,

wonder if they thought about the Wizard of Oz my grandfathers,

probably never even saw it, probly wish

they never saw no Kansas field too. I ponder

what histories we ghost and still we think ourselves alive

and from a Catholic cemetery by the stubble

at the crux of a cardboard cutout of some 48 states

a grave grassily instructs me, Child,

it says Child bury two words, one to cover each our ears,

we who set fire to our own houses to quit the wind's shrieking

but save the middle finger for the railroad, save

opinion for another culture, what you

cant do without fold into a damp teacloth

and fetch to the harvest without asked,

walk your elegizing, our elegizing, six miles to the neighbor's for calomel,

dont sow identity in the landlord's fields, dont

forsake remains of a peasant constitution

and I wanted to shout What are you still dying for?

Cash grain? A share in the wars? Man amounts to something

tell you you sivilized?

But I didn't, run your mouth at a gravet's

liable to swallow you whole. This one it kept talking,

drunk, chawing some fruit country hype

while eyes no more lifted than custom I didn't shout

What you bartered away memory for, this patch of dirty snow?

and the grave isn't screaming Plenty starvation

death and madness to go round help self!

Instead some verses it quoted then halfhearted forgot

as I did me a yoga of cleansing breaths til my

breath got up disgusted, crossed the gravel and lay

down heavily in the shade of a historic marker I couldn't

scan because my gaze went blank. No

not our normal nonperformative look I mean real blankness—

by then I was just horsehair tangled,

uncoalesced freckles stuffed with alfalfa,

and the grave now a recorded message said Should

you meet your straw effigy in a poet's eye

don't waste you a lucifer . . .

I'm sick of this dust. What I'll return to's probly wind—

already I whistle, sshit shrieks in my teeth like panpipes, couldn't

I gust strewing sand and green nut boughs, gold foil con-

dom wrappers, various grits raining upwards

into dark clouds I've seen kind of woman?

No, I wouldn't want that. To

be legible from the moon.