Two Poems by Carly Weiser

 

Sea Legs

He’s checking the consistency of streetlamps around Gates Circle.
Making sure when night falls they click together like synchronized swimmers.
Streamline, shining, and seamless.

He’s off boxing an old man for a fight that doesn’t matter.
But to let the bell ring would be too much.
He has never let anything go.

He’s at the end of the world, inspecting barnacles on a shipwrecked maiden of
auburn, brown, or black.
There is nothing golden in this picture.

But this is a poem for someone else.

Tonight you’ve caught me with my sea legs.
And while I don’t usually swing this way, the steadiness in my feat assures me that
the journey leads here.

Pull me close on a bed of blue.
Create waves that the straight can’t do.

Anchor me down before the sun approaches the east.
And the pirates and poets come to look for my body.

I have found rest in your oaky bob, my fair beauty.
In a corner of the sea, which rarely allows for dreaming.

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 Hieroglyphic Bruises

On Sunday I sat there all dehydrated and smoking,
Smoldering in Friday’s ruins.
Our Rome was built in a day by two carpenters with nothing better to do.
Hammering away into the dead of night.
It was torn down Saturday morning by the necessity that is eating.
We abandoned the rubble in our contaminated clothes from the night before.
Like clockwork though, we will return to the scene of the crime, longing for new
bruises.

Friday night you screamed at paintings after too much wine.
Upsetting the yuppies with their pocketbooks.
“I don’t want to see an artists conception of love! I just want love.”

Oh my industrial valentine, when will you fulfill the promises you never made?
You swore that I could never put monogamy down your pants, so I never tried.
This single can of sweet peaches has lasted through the winter and into the sultry summer.
I search your body for an expiration date and I uncover nothing.
We’re playing battleship in bed, at the café, and in drunken chatter.
Swaying like scarecrows in a hurricane.
But like the game goes, I can never see your side.

I gave you my clitoris in full bloom over and over again.
Between inhales and exhales I scribbled down hieroglyphics.
A language of love only you and I can decipher.

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About the author:

Carly Weiser is a poet from Buffalo, New York, exploring what it means to be a female millennial in middle-America. She is a graduate from Buffalo State College with a BA in theatre. Previous publications include The Allentowner, Melancholy Hyperbole and Mixtape Methodology. In her spare time she likes to love men like Jack Kerouac, drink too much, and write it all down every Sunday.

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