Two Poems by Laura Carter

From The Una Book

I glimpsed a continuity
   a break in the screen was its opposite
        but there was little left to say
autumn’s angles abet us
   coffee grounds spilled on the table
        I marched in the protest
my hands over my face
   what we have done to the world
        the purity of America
gone crazy as Prince
   (this is our pop/rock decades ago)
        the political prince in Venice
that my student compared to Eminem
   I wonder if writing the rupture
        it’s like looking for the seams
in poetry’s utopia
   where only a few emerge without
        burns

youth is a perfect circle (c. R.E.M. 1980s, post-punk)
   that was Murmur, too good to be “true”
      but the poets would know the difference
between the mandala and the world
   c. 10,000 Maniacs or even pure Natalie
      songs written and released on the air
the Clinton years
   that the wrong people are nostalgic for
      me too
whoever is stylized is telling the Gestapo the lies
   I don’t blame them
      tell the truth to your friend
don’t set yourself on fire before morning
   the sun would do enough of that
      his or her omnipotent teeth
the sun has a severed neck
   (Apollinaire)
      the surveying of the estate
we did that in the 2000s
   Candler Park
      the golf course and mansions
bungalows selling for gold
   our youth was a perfect circle
      protesting Iraq, letting Obama in
the great crash felled the trees
   I had to move
      the window across from my own was jaded with stars
I could tell you everything you need to know
   but only once
      and not entirely directly

Laura Carter lives in Decatur, Georgia. She has published eleven chapbooks, most recently with Dancing Girl Press. She has also published many individual poems and book reviews over the years. Find her on IG at @dreamchangelaura.