Anxious Poets Society
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.
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.