Tell the rocks (for lack of women)
of our river rushing its shadows
across our eyes—
how we buried what we wanted in our bodies.
In the evening try to forgive your mother, try
to be forgiven.
There will be time
there will be a time
we will learn, hang our coats, learn.
A glass jar of glass beads – burgundy & violet – once strung and hanging across her chest
marked her body as loved.
These mountains that never
knew her recall her
for me with the first word learned through my skin as I sat in a driveway untended.
don’t leave your childhood, and its / sorrows
The soil smelled like shit
in the sun. I walked the word to the river, shaking, glistening, urban, beside the hospital’s
windows & I saw myself there.
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. Mud, Blood, and Ghosts: Populism, Eugenics, and Spiritualism in the American West is forthcoming in 2023.
Carr is a Professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. With Tim Roberts she is the co-founder of Counterpath Press, Counterpath Gallery, and Counterpath Community Garden in Denver. Follow her on Twitter @CarrCarrjuli
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This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline For Friendship.
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