Poetry: Carignan

something lost is the greatest evidence of “had”

Mackenzie Carignan

 
play

sand sticks in layers landscape his arm

gouge

that grammar will never reach you. form

hill

stimulate the seedlings, starlings, sterling dress

imagine

beautiful triangular ships arriving

imagine

that you might have multiplied and burrowed

imagine

the wood without the water. parched

bring

his significance is blinding. even his own sadness

 

If Ever Then

Mackenzie Carignan

 
I. Contradiction ice: this
spring.  You wouldn’t be blue
otherwise.
              Even when I don’t
want to think of you,
you bang through
with the swoop of marimba,
cupped palm full of kumquats,
                       then flying.

II. We brachiate: shallow root-ball,
dry fronds, living best in the heat,
close and lazy as the city becomes
around us. Telephone: say you still.
Our language, winged, coalesced.

III. I can’t imagine phosphorescence
without wanting you in the sand,
arms awkward obstacles in the way
of this partial, combustible union.
On our way to
                  maybe still.

IV. Be again . . .
we carve valleys, bring me thinking:
what if we collided in the sky
in the street
came apart (broke) in half our
shadows fat, forgiving and giving
inside cars, between streetlight and cobblestone?

V. Crow, barn swallow,
mourning dove, seagulls
colliding above us
like streetlights.

You think we once had wings
or should have become
or will
          or will
                      someday.
 

Mackenzie Carignan teaches in Broomfield, Colorado. She recently finished her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago in English, Creative Writing. She is part of the Black Radish Press consortium and edits the online poetry journal listenlight with Jesse Crockett. For more info, please visit her website: http://www.mackenziecarignan.com.