Sheltering in Place for Beginners
Are you awake? You have relied on anesthesia during
the scapel’s trusty removals. In the ice melt of morning
sit still, read jokes. Wind predicts drought. You will grow
strong in your heart’s ribbed hospital. Become the blue
rising up over your bed. Wake to smell a skunk,
touch the skin of breath. Enjoy the crow’s caw
from their branches. Under the spruce, taste something salty.
Let loneliness grow feathers. In your brain, an amygdala
howls through cracked glass. There she hunkers,
memorizing danger. Embody the lost lover’s voice, temporary
as an amber sun before the heavy machinery of night.
In enviable dark, shake the hand of sleep and let go.
As Numbers of Dead Rise, Moths Fill the Room
Dead leaves still staunch
on stalks are like moths, breathing
the green light of spring: moths
that silken the lamp, flap the bulb,
harmonize in the night’s
wind garden with hum
and drumbeat of wings.
I was once a moth
folded in some book yellowed
and torn, so close to mouth
in the wet bed of imagination.
The woman who died
holding her child’s hand, is now
moth, like all the dead, turning
the page of this day with
their numbers, rooting
for juice, for the lost shelter of skin
and cracks of light through the sill.
Tina Carlson (she/her) is a psychiatric nurse practitioner living in Santa Fe, NM. She is currently reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. She has published two previous collections of poems: Ground, Wind, This Body (UNM Press, 2017) and, We Are Meant To Carry Water (3: A Taos Press), a collaboration with 2 other NM poets. A Guide To Tongue Tie Surgery is forthcoming in spring 2023 from UNM Press.
