Carrie St. George Comer

Carrie St. George Comer was born in 1971 in Eufaula, Alabama. She received her BA from Kenyon College and her MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Conduit, Fence, The Iowa Review, and other journals. Her first collection is The Unrequited (Sarabande, 2003). Comer lives in Miami Beach, Florida, with her husband, Benjamin Alsup, and teaches English at the University of Miami.

Long Goodbye

See the body. It is small and thin.

How the bones show through the skin.

See the flecks of polish on the nails,

the nail polish called glitter moth.

Touch the head. Listen for chimes.

Allow your hand through the hair,

the pale hair spread in the mad science light

of mid-morning rain. Press your lips to the feet.

The glitter from the party stuck to the toes

sticks to your lips. Your lips glimmer

like moths by the orange bulb, like rain

on a queue of white shoes in the grass,

like a starry two A.M. and the hole made

by a wild night, through which boys

in white nightshirts step calmly, and descend.

See the body. Still beneath the sheet.

The rain in the window falling sideways

like moths moving westward.

In the room with high ceilings,

in the room with one lamp on,

in the room where you first touched me, see the body.

In the room where paintings lean against the walls.

In the room where you stroke you bare chest,

where you comb and comb your gold hair.

In the room, in the room, in the room where we first

made it, where you pressed your lips to it,

wrapped your big fingers round it,

slid your bold hand right through it. See the body.

Small and thin. Tired and worn. The head bells,

the circles, the room without windows. The room

with the radio on; talk of visitation, talk of fata morgana,

installments of light, boxes of air and darkness,

in the room with no light in it. In the room where we first touched it.

In the room where we were born, where we will die.

See the body. The rageless body. Tell me, what do you do with yours?

In the room with one lamp on, what do you do, and how?

You have seen it, you have touched it, so was it good?

And did you feel the need to cry when it was done?

There there, they are bringing it out now.

They carry it through the tin corridor of voices

and through the back door. Wrapped in gossamer,

wrapped in cerecloth, in wire, in rosevine,

in silk thread from the shoe factory, in webbing, in chains,

in rope. See the body wrapped in thread from the shoe factory.

Thread made of stolen horses. Thread made of dogs.

Threads of rain.

The body wrapped and left in the driveway.

The body rolling into the street.

Polish on the nails peeking out of the shroud, glitter on the feet.

Wave farewell to the body. Sing to the body as it rolls down the hill,

into the grove and toward the river. Throw marigolds and sing.

Throw doveblooms and sing. Throw a white rose and sing.

Sing low, sing high, sing never come back here again.

Shelburne Falls

A hand in a crevice, the tongue at rest in the mouth,

and also,

the pressure of one body against another: summer, waxed and honeyed.

Rain on the motorbike, rain on the helmet.

Worms on hooks drift beneath the river’s surface.

***

On the bridge of flowers,

a bushel of sweet pea, half-open yellow pods; the tropicanas bleed and fade.

Say it, you were alone. You were alone.

On Nightbeat,

a woman’s face split like a potato by a bullet, her eye on a spring,

she’d meant to lodge it in her brain, of course.

That’s you on the bridge of flowers, watching a dime drop into the water.

That’s you in the restaurant, nursing a clam plate.

Say it, this life we share, it will not do.

This dusty house.

These lackluster friends.

These children, and all their friends.

***

Here comes my brother, in his woe suit,

his woe shoes,

his woe hat.

Last time we saw him he waved from a ledge of blue light,

his belongings in a paper sack:

goodbye, goodbye.

Now he’s here again, in his woe car,

with his woe dog,

how he yowls outside the door.

And all my cousins, in a local motel, watching strippers

play with fruit;

the room with pictures of horses on the walls, the ones with white blazes.

***

From here, I watch young boys leap from the rocks.

And there you are, hurling yourself into the air and mooning us.

And then the girl,

who chickened and slipped.

Her ear leaked as they pulled her pale body from the water.

Say it, you were alone. I was alone.

And the girl fell from the rocks,

and then what? Her head struck,

her ear leaked. I was painting my toes and imagining the deaths

of loved ones. She interrupted me.

Whether the bullet rents the face or buries itself in the skull,

if it blows through the heart,

still, the world, it grows less and less familiar.

***

One town over, a man sketches before dawn,

wingéd humans, only he’s serious. His wife carves an ear out of clay.

Two towns over, a one-legged teen poses naked for a magazine.

Listen, seeds shaking in a paper ball,

the banana vendor’s whistling.

***

Someday I’ll hear it,

the footsteps of my children as they stop to watch the video,

me when I lived with my brand-new cat eyes:

she was plump and fell with a noise

blood leaked from her ear and a large man pulled her from the water

***

Summer: a body rebuilt. Then another.

We arrived in sunlight and drove off in sunlight,

sunlight through rain. Summer: nude and barely breathing,

the sky turning pink and a hush in the willow tops,

love by the humming light,

field stars.

That’s you knee-deep in river water, thin as a crane.

That’s you working the lure from a fish throat.

We’re snaking back around now.

We’re cheering as the bull enters the woman,

as half-light falls on the roses.

This world

peculiar and at the same time, filled with horses,

large photographs of horses,

their heads on fire.

Arbor

Do you remember the love?

Do you remember the passion that took place there?

No.

Do you remember the white fence? The vine of white blossoms?

Not really.

Do you recall the white mug that rested on the wrought-iron table or the white gloves that lifted the mug to the thin lips?

No. I don’t remember any of that. I wasn’t there.

Oh, you were there alright. You couldn’t get enough of those long gloves, those polished shoes, those flowers like stars that came through the trellis slats like grapes. White grapes. And white like a veil of wind. Do you remember? We rocked each other in bed at night when noises covered the old room like a hailstorm, like a wind in the frozen branches. It was Easter. There were hats everywhere. Hats trimmed with shells and magnolias and birds made with real feathers. Lilies wrapped around hats like stars. Remember the girl with grasshoppers in her hair?

No. What color were they?

White. Remember our camel journey? Remember the runaway camel? Remember the rings in his nose? His ankle bracelets? The great chains of jasmine he wore to ride through town? Remember the great chains of jasmine? Remember the abuse we took from the coffee lady? The curtains hanging everywhere? The mirrored pants? Do you remember those sickly sweet balls of dough dipped in syrup? The little moon stuck to her white dress? Not crescent, fully waxed, and red, like a spot of blood. I felt sick over everything I had ever done. Remember that?

Not sure.

Remember the murdered pigs and the women who dismembered them?

God, no.

Remember the guesthouses that were really brothels? That man that kept stroking your hair? The girls with numbers pinned to their dresses? The monkeys that ruled the town? The rooms were like enormous showers with barred windows. Remember the funerals that kept us up at night?

What funerals? And what moon?

Remember the time we blew each other under the stars? You know. I blew your schmetterling. You blew my papillon. Remember?

No.

Yes you do, you rode into town for daffodils because I said we must sound like tree frogs bathing in the throat of a daffodil. And as I lay there waiting in the grass, someone was throwing banana peels out of the neighbor’s attic window. And I slept in the lingering scent of banana and daffodil. White banana. White daffodil. White grapes hanging in the air like little babies filled with light. And you don’t remember?

No, I don’t remember.

Do you remember anything, anything at all?

Nope.

Nothing at all?

No, nothing at all.

Well I could never forget. Someone was crying in the juniper bushes because we’d decided to grow old together. And someone was turning the garage into a planetarium. A milk truck stopped at every doorstep and the clinking bottles chased an egret into the clouds. Remember? A red sun rose and burned everything.