2 poems & 4 audio pieces
Dear Senator
Falling waves & full-throated fumes
do not care about you.
Blonde horses, bland
winds rise and do not
care about you.
Our sister does not
in her flushed face want
what you
want
at all.
--
There’s a light in a room three rooms away.
I’m not, I’m never, going to turn it off.
This sapling night’s just steeped in that dust
puddle. Message me. I’m staying here
in the green green
of under.
--
Vodka-drenched
charcoal night—we
dance, our feet
gash
and stain.
1429 Colorado Dead
through the glass door
my elbow
smells of lake and old navy boy
& dad in matching
T’s- I found a knife
from a different era
convenient store
water in my
car. all doors we’d thought we’d locked
slid open. the private bed was
broken in two
I had a child needed water
they always do – nothing has changed
most I know are still alive
but not all
how might I keep my kids at home, how might I keep them safe?
ask the dreamed women who
rape each other it was
freedom-day a day
like all days
to gather the lone ones in a
thunderous roll, holding hands everything talking running rain
through their hair.
the boy and his dad had slogans on their chests: the cops
love us. it was
father’s day (murderous) night, at least,
I said, they know how it works.
Julie Carr is the author of seven books of poetry, including 100 Notes on Violence, RAG, and Real Life: An Installation, and the prose works Objects from a Borrowed Confession, and Someone Shot My Book. Climate, a book of epistolary essays co-written with Lisa Olstein, is forthcoming from Essay Press. With Tim Roberts, Carr is the co-founder of Counterpath Press, Counterpath Gallery, and Counterpath Community Garden in Denver.
Ben Roberts is a cellist and composer living in Boston Massachusetts. He is a graduate of Cleveland Institute of Music and is currently a graduate student at New England Conservatory. Horse Cafe is Ben Roberts, Katie Knudsvig, Carson McHaney, and Kat Wallace.