Breaking Pelican Bone
She tore apart
the sunlit zones,
worn and moody,
a hatchet shadow,
before the attacks forced
her structure free
of skin. How does
she witness, now,
in her yellow
eyesight, this end?
The water wields
its aspic glassy-ness.
Hermit crabs
husk the rock pile
for empty shells.
The sky is galvanized
sheeting and salt lick
clouds. I fear the snap
echo, I fear her
throat pocket cries
full of sand.
Fire Diary
San Bernadino National Forest, 2020
Feed foothill flanks,
sugar pine, white
bracted manzanita, click
cinder teeth, bite
wilted pine needles.
Fist fingers sweat
steering wheel, tight
throated children parch
in the back seat, peel
the highway skin. Baby
cramps in her mother’s
womb. Blister and updraft
churn, cloak, smoke,
torment root systems,
fill red embolisms, squeal
gold sap boils, where,
where else to go—
Andrea Carter is a poet and writer from Southern California. Her work appears in the San Diego Poetry Annual, The Common Ground, SWWIM, and The Florida Review. She is the 2023 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize winner and teaches at UC San Diego.
Header photo by miezekieze, courtesy Pixabay.
