Mark DeCarteret
The Year I Went Without a Car Stereo
My ears heard what my eyes saw. And so, I read into everything. The trees hiding the deer. The deer hiding the trees. Their diet of twigs and editorials indistinguishable from the twilight. The bright sugar we poured on our tongues. The visors they wore when the sun drove their eyes into slits. I’m on time in my own head. That year now revered by the town. The town now in twinkling lights. My ears hearing what death saw in me. And so went easy on it. Reading little else into it. Severing light from everything it held dear. Star none ride. Star leaf. I could only feel my fingers. Doing what they had done all along. Felt them touch where the world had left off. A sort of tingling. Given over to song. My ears hearing where the sea had once conned me. Into being more tender. No deer hurt in the making. The same hair on my tongue for a week now. How I tried to return to that side. One desire as insufferable as the other. One bluff. I sniffed out my 11-year-old self. Like a melon slice. Like a moon skilled in tides. Like the trees cooling off on the side of a hill. That I give the same name as my mysterious foe. Despite the silence. The system will assure me. You are still working. I am still working. Waist deep in candy. In the candy mine.
The Year I Went Without Following in My Own Footsteps
for Lynda Barry
We had a little rabbit. A good-for-nothing little rabbit. And though we raised it to write poetry. Be this bard-ass metaphorically spoken up for. Likened only to the marvelous retreads from the matter of factory. What it wrote theme-wise was so tight in the throat, light, it whistled high-on-nursery-school melodies, made you Disney. Was like biting into air. Or grabbing at bubbles. The rhymes so skill-less and ill timed. They aspired to filler. Last gasping from all the life support. Were preferably left to the imagination, mimed. Or grabbed in fists out the bargain bin. Even when it risked being funny. It only kissed up to its sickly-sweet self, inner bunny. Rubbed any right to be e-shared the wrong way. Though I’ll admit that a title or two held my interest. Were lit into by a source not unwholly leaving us to fits. But then it took a turn for the worse. Grew sourer and testier from our words. And the more we tried rousing interest. In the world as we’d drawn it up. Took a wand to it. Our good for nothing little rabbit. Only woke to kowtow to this long thought-out tank. Left to dry swallow a sun. The off-white of a collar. Look into debuting its latest collection. Of uncontrollable tics and, well… talking. Finally, get out from under the shadow, of those aging kings. Unlocking the cage, they recalled awarding its naming rights, to The Mainstream. And their download of an anthem—“What We Lacked in Action Figures We Made up in Grief Counseling.” But it only grew double its size. With yet more in the way of sorrow and worry. Blew up this image of itself. Till it felt more at ease in. Or hardwired for. Being game for more games. Or any mess seemingly begged out of by magic. Any story that started off. We had a little rabbit. Oh, that good for nothing little rabbit. With its tail whisked out of milk. And its ears teased out of sugar. Its nose perpetually caught in a sneeze. And its teeth, so bloodied from devouring wood. They could only belong to our son.
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Mark DeCarteret sang and played guitar for Shim Jambs and now does the same for Codpiece.