Four Shorts
Four Shorts
1.
organic green
(for Pat who died too young)
when you come back you will lead
a flock of mallards through novice blue
no more brown speckled plumage
courting distorted images
in stagnant pond water
your glossy bottle-green head will burn
the wind jealous-amber as always
your wild feathers so fowl
light will follow you
2.
Construction Worker
(about an eighth grade girl)
She could tell
by force of fist
against the small of her back
how much he adored her.
And she was growing
at breakneck speed
to out run the wrecking ball.
3.
discothèque
(at the dance club Heaven)
blackbird perched on the tip
of a tall pine flit fast like
Christmas angels flee the scene
after the tree is tossed—dance
wildly right into Donna Summer’s
mouth, wide open, singing
last dance, last chance
4.
中國食品
(eating out)
five mallards flew a V over Sunday sermon
in praise of gong bao chicken— night before
my fortune cookie read Hallelujah!
my Chinese friend said the translation
was misleading the birds flying backwards
Note: The title Chinese Food is written in Chinese simplified.
Sheila L. Carter-Jones is the author of Three Birds Deep, winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Book Award, and her chapbook Crooked Star Dream Book was named Honorable Mention for the New York Center for Book Arts Chapbook Contest. She is a fellow of Cave Canem, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and a Walter Dakin Fellow of the Sewanee Writer’s Conference. She was born and raised in a small coal mining town in Western Pennsylvania which is the site for many of her poems. Her poetry has been published in various journals, anthologies and newspapers. Sheila received her MFA from Carlow University where she currently teaches in their Madwomen in the Attic Program. Her book Every Hard Sweetness is forth coming from BOA Editions, Ltd. in the spring of 2024.
