Laton Carter

Mourning Dove

The method of sustained grief
          is an intonation
 
falling back into the cage of the chest. Hear how it knocks.
          Examining loss is another way toward
 
finding what you have. When I say
you, I don’t mean “one.”
 
What you have is before you, always a little
lonely for the next glance.
 
It doesn’t matter if every embrace is meaningful. Touch
adds to itself. Bodies sell its thrill.
 
          ​A reliance on language — can it solve
the impropriety of absence? Who
 
left you, who will leave you, what comes
next. It will happen, it will.

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Along the Water

The girls who cut class
walk down by the creek.
 
They gather handfuls of tall fescue
still anchored in mud
 
and braid them, leaving
hip-high green arches as a reminder
 
of a newfound restlessness.
If boys knew anything — and some
 
did, but were too shy to let themselves
be known — they would see
 
into these spontaneous structures
the pressing need of hands
 
to touch and be touched, to work and test
the fiber of limbs rising from the breathless ground.

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Laton Carter's Leaving (University of Chicago) received the Oregon Book Award. Previous work has appeared in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Brooklyn Review, The Citron Review, Sonora Review, and Split Lip Magazine.