Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 5, is now online. Yeah, you heard right…, Issue 5. We’re shifting our new volume year to begin in April starting in 2017. For now, enjoy a special BONUS issue to Volume 18 with new poems by Laura Falsetti, Sara Henning, Elizabeth Onusko, Alyssa Jewell, John A. Nieves, Hayden Saunier, Wendy Drexler, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Alina Borger, Sarah Carleton, Allyson Jeffredo, Wendy DeGroat, Charlotte Covey, Judith Montgomery, Carmen Germain, and Christopher Citro. Stay tuned later in the month for new reviews by Jeff Whitney and Barbara L. Estrin.
Tag Archives: Wendy Taylor Carlisle
Denver
by Wendy Taylor Carlisle
I was a kid when we hit Mile-High suburbs, carcasses of Winnebagos
strung out behind us on the plains, the mile-long gas lines coming in view.
Doubt ate me like flowers. I’d seen the scalded girl, the jungle on fire.
I asked, what is there to fight for? What explains this warfare?
Shush, said Aunt Bet, you think you’re better than the VFWs?
Wait’ll you get grown. What did I know then about old GIs
in semi-transparent shirts, dancing Saturday night away under
a tarnished mirror-ball? Let the Marines be good citizens, I answered,
I’d rather be naked. No uniform suits me. In Denver, I dreamed
of soldiers, dreamed of my gentle, demented mother driving into town in
a scrounged-up travel-trailer. Someone else’s predicate centered my paragraphs.
Someone else’s day made up my mystery. Adult answers didn’t satisfy
once I discovered grown-up was just another war
on a field I didn’t recognize, once I saw my skin was useless armor.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 5.
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Ozark Mountains. Her two books are Reading Berryman to the Dog (Jacaranda Press, 2000) and Discount Fireworks (Jacaranda Press, 2008.) Read more about her work at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com.
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Cento Pantoum
by Wendy Taylor Carlisle
from Steve Dunn, Riffs and Reciprocities
Religion is proof a good story’s a powerful thing.
What we say about our past becomes our past.
Blessed are the generous who keep enough for themselves…
The punishment for being good is a life of goodness.
What we say about our past becomes our past.
I am the citizen of warm wet places…
The punishment for being good is goodness.
Those failures of nerve, not of skill, are the worst.
I am the citizen of warm wet places…
There’s always a little more fun on the devil’s side.
Those failures of nerve, not of skill, are the worst.
The best of us yield in time.
There’s always a little more fun on the devil’s side.
Blessed are the generous who keep enough for themselves…
the best of us yield in time.
Religion is proof a good story’s a powerful thing.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 15, Issue 4.
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Ozark Mountains. Her two books are Reading Berryman to the Dog (Jacaranda Press, 2000) and Discount Fireworks (Jacaranda Press, 2008.) Read more about her work at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com.
See all items about Wendy Taylor Carlisle