MARK DECARTERET
The Year I Went Without Wishing for Anything
Moon too numerable to be mentioned. Too bent over to trust. Toad-scowling moon. Adamant moon. Moon that takes up with the window. All is clouds at this point. Dreams doused with the fictions of the mad. The ticks of a travel clock. I’m still going over the damage. A town too tucked in, too attentive to details, for this kind of game playing. A hill won over then lost. I don’t sleep anymore. Instead, I buddy up to the dead. Give their heirs mouth to mouth. Till they behave again. Are left to their files and their surf films, the waves dubbed in with more ways to save. Moon pokes its head in. Lays with me in bed. Says I’m its sun-god, the only one. Really.I’m grinding my teeth into elixirs. Clinic-smelling texts. My parents not able to manage a middle name for me. Thus, I’ve only this empty lot. In which to practice my x. This off-putting moon. Moon pesticide white. Moon checked off by Stevens’ blackbirds. Moon left out for contactless pick up. I tried staying calm to fit in. To keep up the town’s streak. But there’s more dislikes on the crest. Makeshift effigies in the chatroom. Speech that defies speech and then stumps us incessantly. Puts one at risk to be tongue-kissed by rhetoric. Now the wind shakes the light. Cashes in on the surface of the cabinet door. I don’t sleep any more. Instead, I host thousands. South of south of here. A chalice airlifted. A room filled with nothing but chairs. The ghostsdemanding their share. Hungry even for ghosts. Moon hashtag my personal stash. Hashtag shrapnel. I fold myself into a swan. And succumb to its first ever form. Soulfully taxed. Awestruck by its neighborly light. As good as my poems are. I couldn’t find one that I needed.
Copyright © October 2022 Mark DeCarteret
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Poems from Mark DeCarteret’s manuscript The Year I/We Went Without have been taken by The American Poetry Review, BlazeVOX, The Ekphrastic Review, Guesthouse, Hole in the Head Review, Meat for Tea, Nixes Mate Review, Plume Literary Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal and Unbroken.
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