Cindy Carlson
Two Poems
Petal Push for Please
Flower my neck storm day sunshinebut 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.
