1.
With boulders, or another substance that can’t burn, I’ll build a barn,
buy Nigerian goats to bounce with favored popcorn sheep.
Animals kicking bare bone as wildfire steams a skyline.
2.
Goatee on my chin, the soul of California is burning like a lung.
I’m goat eye, horizontal, confusing as three pupils,
a shag of helpless, readying to die in the coming singe.
3.
I don’t eat meat from a table though mouths I love
water at the char of curry. Sweet strings of shoulder,
a chew of God meat in the cheek of a funky heaven.
Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth, published in 2016 by Indolent Books and The Unbuttoned Eye, a full-length 2019 collection from 3: A Taos Press. Among other publications his poetry appears in Crab Orchard Review, Lana Turner Journal, the Maine Review, the Massachusetts Review and Shenandoah. Selected by the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, he is the recipient of a 2022 artist residency at Monson Arts. Additional information can be found at robertcarr.org
