Werewolf When I was seven and you in your twenties late one night you perched in the arms of that old sycamore outside my window wearing a cloud of gown that shifted opalescent in the shadows bright hair drifted about your face you lifted your voice to the pearl moon howled clear and cold as any wolf Next morning you hummed made pancakes used the good china opened morning-glory curtains to yellow sunshine and when I asked if you were a werewolf you said I’d dreamed it I said like hell I did and tasted Ivory soap and maple syrup all the way to school You changed after that became fierce swapped making pancakes for pancake makeup prowled canyons flanked by skyscrapers went for the jugular nailed down deals with 4-inch stilettos signed contracts in lipstick For years I wondered at your transformation and why you did that sat in a tree stared at the moon howling like nobody’s mother When it was too late to tell you I remembered how fear came into our lives how I found your oils and brushes in the trash how mangled paintings went up in flames that reached for the moon how the piano grew silent and you forgot to dance and no one laughed too loudly or sang How on the night he finally left you climbed the sycamore easy as a child sat there howling at the stars. ©2009, Carla Martin-Wood, from Redheaded Stepchild, Pudding House Publications |
Cherry-on-Top Cherry-on-Top drove a new ‘63 VW, Pepto Bismol pink just like her lipstick and leather miniskirt. Maybelline eyes, cantaloupe breasts stood out in our flat-chested reality. Sunny-haired blue-eyed, running on empty, Cherry was the sure thing cheerleading future wife of a quarterback envy of underlings. Acne’d adolescent whispers of pot and blow jobs at away-games, sneaking under bleachers Spanish Fly by night Boones Farm, sticky sweet cherry-flavoured four-letter words giggled secrets lies and gossip her nickname a joke in every locker room. Cherry-on-Top driving by in perfect pink oblivion. Decades gone, Cherry-on-Top sells patterns at Justine’s Fabrics. Proud moms of new cheerleaders scoop them up. One breast and crowning glory gone to cancer, Cherry-scented lipstick stains creep into lines hard around Cherry lips, eyeliner dragged in jagged marks across crepe paper lids. Cherry says how she remembers when she was on top, complete with rhinestone tiara, pink orchid corsage so big she couldn’t look down to see us wave, when she was queen, and how the gym decorated in tissue paper, chicken wire and christmas lights looked just like heaven must. ©2009,Carla Martin-Wood, from Redheaded Stepchild, Pudding House Publications |
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The following applies to The Well-ReadHead and all its content:
Poems, readings and illustrations by Carla Martin-Wood are Copyright 2010 Carla Martin-Wood. All rights reserved. This material may not
be reproduced in any form, published, recorded, performed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without explicit written permission of
Carla Martin-Wood. All such actions are strictly prohibited under law.
Likewise, all poems read by or explicitly attributed to visiting poets on this site are the property of such visiting poets and are under
copyright by them, and all photographs and illustrations appearing on this site are the property of the designated photographers and/or
illustrators and are under copyright by the respective poets, artists, illustrators and photographers. All rights reserved. Such material may
not be reproduced in any form, published, recorded, performed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without explicit written permission of
the author. All such actions are strictly prohibited under law.
Please see my Links page for a list of the various sites that have graciously provided some of the gifs for The Well-ReadHead. Please visit
their websites for more information.
The Well-ReadHead, Copyright 2009, Carla Martin-Wood, all rights reserved. Reproduction in any form is strictly prohibited under law.
Poems, readings and illustrations by Carla Martin-Wood are Copyright 2010 Carla Martin-Wood. All rights reserved. This material may not
be reproduced in any form, published, recorded, performed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without explicit written permission of
Carla Martin-Wood. All such actions are strictly prohibited under law.
Likewise, all poems read by or explicitly attributed to visiting poets on this site are the property of such visiting poets and are under
copyright by them, and all photographs and illustrations appearing on this site are the property of the designated photographers and/or
illustrators and are under copyright by the respective poets, artists, illustrators and photographers. All rights reserved. Such material may
not be reproduced in any form, published, recorded, performed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without explicit written permission of
the author. All such actions are strictly prohibited under law.
Please see my Links page for a list of the various sites that have graciously provided some of the gifs for The Well-ReadHead. Please visit
their websites for more information.
The Well-ReadHead, Copyright 2009, Carla Martin-Wood, all rights reserved. Reproduction in any form is strictly prohibited under law.
| Proserpine, Dante Gabriel Rossetti Eve No petals to scent passively the breeze or leaves to turn submissive toward the sun no roots to hold me firmly in my place no graceful frond -- no seeds I can tell you that garden expelled me for a misfit long before its Gardener cast me out And then, there was The Voice. Shall I tell you what it was to listen? How beyond impossible it was to turn away? It was not the unexpected conversation nor the surprise of intelligence within his eyes that beguiled me It was that he spoke to me at all as though I were more than an afterthought provoked to pacify The Man or a secondhand rib to cloak in lesser flesh And it was that he seemed to know the mysterious longing that rose unbidden each time I saw the vixen nuzzling with her kits or the ewe with her lamb And that he knew with what boredom I watched alone flowers and fruit grown unaided as the days droned on same after same no change no end in sight And so I took the fruit he offered and found it sweet a grace upon my tongue and marveled at so many seeds And desire quickened and crawled deep in my belly for the first time And I recalled the pink flesh of the fig and sought her out and took her leaves to cover the surprise of rosy nipples and the secret that awakened warm and dark between my thighs but it was never to hide from the Gardener and his disfavour that I so adorned myself I did it to entice The Man that he might savour that sweetness of my flesh that he had never guessed I didn’t even mind when the henchmen came with their fiery swords to bind the garden gates and cast us out Truth to tell I never liked strolling with the Gardener always a pace behind him and The Man never knowing what they said never knowing what to say never daring to ask never understanding why I was something he thought of last All said, all done, I’d do it again just to feel that intoxicating rush of my blood when I first knew I could cause The Man to tremble as I held him riding the night within me or to see the sweet pursed lips of Cain innocent and new as he suckled at my breast like the vixen with her kits so long ago or to watch the thriving pomegranate tree that sprouted up from those seeds I carried with me I never wept and never lost a thing they all have lied who said I fell I didn’t fall from anywhere: I leapt! ©2009, Carla Martin-Wood, from Garden of Regret, Pudding House Publications |
| Bitch Whatever poison runs through the veins of wolves that draws them to some solitary place, there to howl in altercation with the moon, runs burning through my veins tonight, and restless, sweating, I rise and pace this carpeted wilderness, these rooms grown strange. How many times have we mated on nights like this, rain beating like the frantic hands of a jealous wife against the windows? How many nights have you fed my craving, a mad thing wild and tangled with tears and earth come crying in from the woods? How many years have I let you hide your anger and your grief inside me? I have learned so well how easily one passion is spent in another. And is this love that gorges itself, then slips to some cave apart and gnaws the bones of memory, till it grows lean and hungry once more? I write this under a hunter's moon, the years baying behind me like a pack of hounds. ©2009, Carla Martin-Wood, from Garden of Regret, Pudding House Publications |
| Night, by Edward Robert Hughes, Pre-Raphaelite artist Broken Lullaby (for Zachary, from the shadow that falls behind you) A short span, we shared an intimate world. Mine, the first voice you heard in primal darkness. I crooned to you in comfort; Laughed, as you announced yourself: an unfamiliar flutter like some soft-winged creature trapped in an earth-bound cage. A child with child I shared my secrets with you as though you were an invisible playmate. Midnight, mid-March, I clutched reality with two strong hands and pushed you toward first light, saw your eyes adjust to the gradual brutality of dawn. Mine was the first face you saw. I taught you warm; I taught you milk; I taught you flower and sky and stone. You learned; you grew; you were my joy made life. So soon I was to learn (as mothers must) how it is that sons are always moving away from you always walking individual and strange toward some distant hill. Daughters came bound to me by tides and moons and blood. They know me in their pulse and breath and undeniable rhythms. Sons are different. With what quick and sharp propriety the cultural knife severed the cord that bound us. I write to say what mothers seldom dare: that there was a loss. That there is a hollow left in the heart of the waking world when sons are wrenched so soon away. That, perhaps, sons miss also something they can’t quite name. Something that surfaces in dreams, a wise old woman come creeping across the double-helix bridge to counsel and protect. Listen to her closely, and you will hear my voice: I was the pebble dropped into the deep waters of your mind so long ago. See now the circles spread out forever. I, who was your home awhile, I, who named you as I wove your flesh and knit your bones and forged your brain, I am writing this poem to you from the shadow that falls behind you in a spill of years, moving (as sons always are) toward some far horizon. Perhaps you will hear me crooning to you in the old darkness of a half-remembered dream. I sing to you, my son, with love, this broken lullaby, hushed by the necessary world. I sing to you, my son, this shattered song across a bridge of stars. ©2009, Carla Martin-Wood, from Garden of Regret, Pudding House Publications |
| Digital illustration, Sarah Dances, ©2009, Carla Martin-Wood Feedsack Majesty He only wears Armani now, my sister says of our brother as we watch the children skate in an icy Central Park. Her voice drones on mingles with traffic noise and I am drawn away by a remembered song of cicadas far off starting soft then building to a crescendo the way they do. On trips to the feed store fall and winter Mama-Teen would take us girls to pick up flour and feed in printed muslin sacks We’d pick the ones with pretty sprigged patterns while she hoped for something boyish for my brother Chanel never searched so diligently for fabric nor stitched with such pride sundresses and shirts to last all summer I recall the four of us three girls, one boy running barefoot through the long singing meadows of our childhood garbed in feed sack splendor real lilies of the field and none were so arrayed we knew ourselves the undisputed owners of the sun the broad-faced moon and the oceanic waves of timothy grass below the far hill where we played through those green and shining seasons of forever I don’t recall exactly when it was we learned the price of things. I only know I choose to keep safe in my pocket the coins of honeysuckle summers the moon’s wide smile and feedsack majesty. ©2008, Carla Martin-Wood, First appeared in Mississippi Crow, Issue 7 |
Lilith Who I am sneaks up on a man though I can tell when he knows by his nervous laugh or the way he can’t quite focus on things like the stock market or football scores that infinitely pleasurable moment when I know he’s lost control I never know just what may tip him off the candles at the bottom of the stairs always burning though no one lights them or the shadow of a lion that prowls across the wall perhaps, it’s that ill wind howling clear and cold around the eaves though it’s hot August and not a leaf is stirring more often, it’s those pale fingers that trace words on the wainscoting after dinner: mene mene tekel . . . Along about then he realizes I didn’t come from any man’s rib and I’m no Eve who needs a snake to tell her what to do hell, I planted the tree he crawled out of I sing up tsunamis, baby take your children steal your soul fuck with your dreams. ©2009, Carla Martin-Wood |
| Digital illustration, The Gardener, ©2009, Carla Martin-Wood Weeds Bent over her garden of topiary perfection, weeding away what grows without permission, pruning back what strays outside the lines, hat blocking out undesirable sun: that’s how I found her. Each day I walked past, silently dared her to reach through whitewashed pickets that fenced our years, call my name, give me a reason to forgive – perhaps if I saw regret, or even hesitation in that smile of satisfaction each time she tore roots from earth. Senility blessed her with forgetfulness of driving rain, cold, a long ago warehouse, telling me, young and frightened, go inside let someone weed her grandson out of me. Now my son researches a cure for cancer, speaks on BBC, smiles from magazine covers, blooms. The last time I walked past, she called out frail, childlike: Here, lady – here – I’ll give you my best one, across the fence, proudly handed me a rose, meticulous and manicured. Leaning close, I saw empty eyes, heard her small voice, hollow and broken, felt something finish, whispered back: You already did. ©2009,Carla Martin-Wood, from Redheaded Stepchild, Pudding House Publications |
| To find out more about Carla's chapbooks, click below. |
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| Moon in Sycamore, ©2009,Carla Martin-Wood |
