[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.