Cleb at 8
Carolyn Hembree

[A primordial mountain. Daybreak.]

Cue the smoke-edged cowboy
boulders backdrop

Out of yellow smoke

a ten-gallon tenor on the catwalk
catwalk of fly-rock steppingstones

who knows how to fuck with the future

Some opera this—a boy in the pit
of a gorge, a boy and a burlap

of blind cats in the pit of a gorge
ruffed grouse, cottonmouth

cues the ovenbird overture then the

BLIND CAT CHORUS:
If you untie this burlap

Mama Cleb shall appear

under a sapling
just here she’s
toking a joint
cheek-to-cheek
in joined sleeping bags
with the ten-gallon tenor

MAMA CLEB ARIA:
A starlet silk
trilling moss
cold rocks

MAMA CLEB AND TEN-GALLON TENOR DUET:
If you do not untie the burlap
if you do not put your hand in
we will go back into our yellow smoke
the yellow smoke into the smoke-edged cowboy boulders
smoke-edged cowboy boulders

into tree-
shaped
clouds

and the blind cats
will burrow
the creek

long vowels up from its slimy arrowhead mouth-to-mouth bottom

the creek
will rise

 

 

 

 


Carolyn Hembree‘s debut poetry collection, Skinny, came out from Kore Press in 2012. Her forthcoming book, Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a Plague, won the 2015 Trio Award, selected by Neil Shepard, and the 2015 Marsh Hawk Press Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award, selected by Stephanie Strickland. The book will come out from Trio House Press in the spring. Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, Drunken Boat, The Journal, Poetry Daily, and other publications. She has received grants and fellowships from PEN, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and the Southern Arts Federation. Carolyn serves as poetry editor of Bayou Magazine.