Two Poems by Pamela Hobart Carter
Criminal
- (thanks to Marie Darrieussecq, author of Etre ici est une splendeur)
Women had no names of their own
but their first names--
their surnames a transitional state,
an unstable sign, ephemera.
They were to find other landmarks.
Their affirmations of existence
on the planet—their “being theres,”
their creativity, their signatures--
they invented for themselves in the world of men
by breaking and entering.
Men meanwhile wanted to see women as holy,
as flowers, as roses in bloom.
- (thanks to Marie Darrieussecq, author of Etre ici est une splendeur)
Women had no names of their own
but their first names--
their surnames a transitional state,
an unstable sign, ephemera.
They were to find other landmarks.
Their affirmations of existence
on the planet—their “being theres,”
their creativity, their signatures--
they invented for themselves in the world of men
by breaking and entering.
Men meanwhile wanted to see women as holy,
as flowers, as roses in bloom.
The Husband Of My Dream Is Unfamiliar
Slighter in heft, lankier, in an unsettling way--
I climb our carpeted stairs
to escape him, an argument, but his grating voice
pursues me around the bend,
and then is lost. In a bright attic,
I am free of him and it.
Still asleep, I realize, I can just leave.
Nothing holds me
where things are not working. I can
just walk away.
Awake, I know, it is so often this way:
choices exist. We can go.
We can take in a dog
where none has been.
We can move to another state,
and make it home.
We can paint a giant and beautiful canvas
on this day.
We can leave
the wrong husbands.
We can just walk away. Walk,
walk forth, walk.
Slighter in heft, lankier, in an unsettling way--
I climb our carpeted stairs
to escape him, an argument, but his grating voice
pursues me around the bend,
and then is lost. In a bright attic,
I am free of him and it.
Still asleep, I realize, I can just leave.
Nothing holds me
where things are not working. I can
just walk away.
Awake, I know, it is so often this way:
choices exist. We can go.
We can take in a dog
where none has been.
We can move to another state,
and make it home.
We can paint a giant and beautiful canvas
on this day.
We can leave
the wrong husbands.
We can just walk away. Walk,
walk forth, walk.
Pamela Hobart Carter won her high school essay contest but only became a full-time writer after earning two geology degrees (at Bryn Mawr College and Indiana University), and teaching science, art, and preschool for thirty years. She did write plays, poems, essays, and six short books in easy English for No Talking Dogs Press on the side. A dozen of her plays have been read and produced on Seattle stages. Her writing has appeared in Barrow Street, The Seattle Star, The Seattle Times, Teaching Young Children, and Quick Fiction, among others. Carter has lived more than half her life in Seattle, WA.
