"Outweighing what we cannot change, and growing," Marilyn Bushman-Carlton considers how the landscapes of one's life evolve. Her children are growing up. One plays violin, and the music he chooses "turns him inside out, / becomes a voice to find himself." She watches him leave for school, "the crotch of his X-tra Large pants swinging / between the clothespins of his knees, / the waist nearly a foot south / and cinched like a knapsack." When did the neighborhood lose its innocence? she wonders. She notices the twisted trunks of century-old shrubs. In her day "[she] tried not to stare / in the open door of the beer joint / on my way to Linda's house," imagining what it was like "lifting heavy thick mugs, / sloshing the counter / with bubbly brown sin." Instead, she and Linda sat "beneath a sycamore . . . almond arms bared, jeans rolled thin / above the knees. Whispered news / Suzanne's parents getting a divorce"; hope "it isn't so." "We've circled back," she tells her husband. Their daughter has left for college. "We've learned that pausing helps us see. / We bend toward, and cherish, / the few things we're sure of."
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
The Second Time I Held You the bright lights had simmered to indecisive March daylight. You were newly swaddled in a blanket of gauze, had absorbed the antiseptic smell of the birthing room. Your skin had purchased an ecru tint, you eyes had grayed. After the pronouncement that all ten fingers and toes were accounted for, that the tiny features of your face were beautiful, I didn't notice the arid echo in the otherwise vigorous cry that announced your coming, the sound that made me hold you the second time like I think I might hold a leaf-thin delicately laced crystal heirloom. --exerpt, On Keeping Things Small
Farmer's Wife Sometimes quiet startles her. Hands wrist-deep in dishwater, she stops, listens for the tractor's thrum trailing from the fields. She strains at the kitchen window for dust signals rising from beneath the plow. Sometimes silage-ripe air breathes pictures of farmers she knows with missing fingers, limbs; one with a useless eye; another smothered by an up-turned tractor. Wiping sudsy hands on the lap of her apron, she walks to where she knows he'll be. A smile, a wave, and she returns, finishes what she left. Her song travels to where he pitches hay mid-morning, to the barn where he milks the cows. She calls him in with smoke from a supper chimney and smells of slow-cooked soup. --excerpt, On Keeping Things Small
Farmer's Wife Sometimes quiet startles her. Hands wrist-deep in dishwater, she stops, listens for the tractor's thrum trailing from the fields. She strains at the kitchen window for dust signals rising from beneath the plow. Sometimes silage-ripe air breathes pictures of farmers she knows with missing fingers, limbs; one with a useless eye; another smothered by an up-turned tractor. Wiping sudsy hands on the lap of her apron, she walks to where she knows he'll be. A smile, a wave, and she returns, finishes what she left. Her song travels to where he pitches hay mid-morning, to the barn where he milks the cows. She calls him in with smoke from a supper chimney and smells of slow-cooked soup. --excerpt, On Keeping Things Small
About the Author
Marilyn Bushman-Carlton has published in CityArt Poetry on the Bus, Earth's Daughters, Exponent II, Iris, and Prize Poems of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. She is a graduate of the University of Utah and has taught poetry workshops at Pioneer Craft House. She and her family reside in Salt Lake City.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet.
|
|||
|
Video reviews
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
