Conversations with A New Lover by Beatrice Carlson

I.

You glean for a home recovered, celestial,

Put asunder—

You dream of songs that aren’t his to mold into the shapes of your memories;

These remain to be

A comfort,

A stranglehold.

Drifting, these threads

Weave serenely

To shoulder the things you cannot yet accept.

And I want to keep them

Adept;

See (though he won’t) the momentum, my rise.

My Son behind,

He inside,

You pardoned in the outskirts.

We (is there?) held

Each other

With generational unrest.

La Clairvoyance by René Magritte

May be a retroactive reminder

Absorbed in the estate of pale vows.

II.

Love in the mind

As a gyroscope,

As unaffected until penetrated.

Or maybe an asteroid

Outside human nebula: burning, spinning, pulling.

“Lean not on your own understanding.” Rage shatters the Now it knows

Then is pieced together

In your own time.

You willed me to learn

Its impact

When given reign (Why, Why)

Yearning that grows like spores

Upon the fruit you touched to your lips—

My mastery in those feeble partitions.

I’ve seen enough of Hell to know

The bitterness in rejecting, the bitterness of surrender;

I have nothing, nothing to lose.

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Beatrice Carlson is a poet and musician living in Irving, TX. When considering why she writes, she quotes her late great-grandfather, Albert Bloch: “I paint because I must.” Beatrice has had her work featured in her college newsletters as well as in Thimble Literary Magazine.