by Carl Kutsmode
As If You Didn’t Know by the Sound of My Voice
You were everything to me.
The living statue that became
the flaming twilight in the skyline.
The mariachi when the new
birds break open in the spring.
How am I supposed to pump gas
or drink milk
now that I can no longer eat
the lava from your hands?
Brass bands have withdrawn,
and my knees buckle under the weight
of this gray dragon
of your new and permanent absence.
All commiseration’s a paper fan
in egg-frying weather,
when I call my friends at a late
early hour for consolation,
and they tell me: the important thing is we tried
kissing with our mouths open in the bathhouse water
as our mothers braided our hair.
Wrapped as I am now in the burning frigidity
of mammalian dread and confusion—
or heartache, as was put bluntly
by bubblegum pop long ago—
I think of nothing in particular
but vaguely of your comfort now,
if you are capable of feeling
comfort where you are now,
and I sigh at the kitchen table
alone in my double wide.
The box window full of hillside,
the hillside full of deer,
though I cannot see them, any.
The deer are tomorrow.
Chris Prewitt is the author of Paradise Hammer (SurVision Books), winner of the 2018 James Tate Poetry Prize. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
Carl Kutsmode is not a professional or Juried artist. He is a serial entrepreneur in the recruiting and management consulting industry. Following 9/11, he realized that something major was missing in his life – a CREATIVE outlet – which he soon found in art and photography. Without any lessons, he began painting abstracts in acrylic. Although Carl only paints ad hoc when he is inspired by external business or life frustrations, he maintains a consistent theme in his art, one of differentiation, transformation and forward movement.