Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and writes in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of two books and five chapbooks. For more about her, check her website at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com.
Short Prayer
God, if there is a god, bless Friday afternoon for the stack of wood I didn’t get cut, for the co-worker I unwittingly snubbed, for the party I skipped just because and for the sigh I heaved knowing it was three days until blessed Monday.
God, (same caveat), bless Monday for its upstart beginning, for the rejections stacked up over the weekend and for its optimistic heart, for its sentences that begin, this week I’m…. Bless this day since it has its tongue out for the first snowflake, its palm out for a raindrop. Praise Monday because there’s nowhere to go from there but on.
My Husband Asks, What Are You Thinking?
I’m pondering on
a rodeo man,
RCA belt buckle,
stiletto toes, arched back,
a tall skinny stranger
always waving
goodbye
I drank to drown my sorrows, but the damned things learned how to swim.
– Frieda Kahlo
Diego Rivera called his daughter, “Little Pinhead,”
Frieda Kahlo was barren
Rivera was a Mexican, a nationalist, a leftist.
Frieda was always in pain.
Rivera only painted her twice.
Frieda said, At the end of the day,
we can endure much more
than we think we can.
William, the Poem
When Stafford was asked
how he wrote a passable
poem each day, he answered,
Lower your standards.
After Great Loss
I have become the mistress of the unlit,
black dress formal, sad as a 2 car funeral.
What shall I do in all this somber dark
but dance and dance and dance
in my hallelujah shoes?