Sarah Carson
Self-Portrait as So Much Rock Throwing (Or I Am Thinking About How Some of the Atoms Are Boulders)
The night the first boy I loved finally kissed me,
the streetlights & the fireflies
were indistinguishable.
What else was there to want
but their destruction?
We were the rocks in our fingers.
We were the stones piercing eyelets in skin.
High school boys drove their dates to the dam
drunk on box wine & mouthwash,
& blue lights lit the bridge like a midway
Men with other weapons demanded we name
each crack like a christening
What do you call a ________ separate from the machinery
of a crackdown?
Call ________ splintered. Call ________ cleaving.
Some questions, some answers
are already flung fossils.
Some Philistines do not fall
no matter how hard you throw.
Now on that same stretch of flotsam
where the stars became wounds
in the firmament,
other children break glass upon bone
return another girl's father
to the basalt from which he came.
I rock my daughter alone in a dark house
dreaming
of the other mothers' immovable
plans for the future
How many rocks did you throw the cops asked
The river beneath us was a rock face, roiling.
Sometimes a girl must become sling
or be slung.
the streetlights & the fireflies
were indistinguishable.
What else was there to want
but their destruction?
We were the rocks in our fingers.
We were the stones piercing eyelets in skin.
High school boys drove their dates to the dam
drunk on box wine & mouthwash,
& blue lights lit the bridge like a midway
Men with other weapons demanded we name
each crack like a christening
What do you call a ________ separate from the machinery
of a crackdown?
Call ________ splintered. Call ________ cleaving.
Some questions, some answers
are already flung fossils.
Some Philistines do not fall
no matter how hard you throw.
Now on that same stretch of flotsam
where the stars became wounds
in the firmament,
other children break glass upon bone
return another girl's father
to the basalt from which he came.
I rock my daughter alone in a dark house
dreaming
of the other mothers' immovable
plans for the future
How many rocks did you throw the cops asked
The river beneath us was a rock face, roiling.
Sometimes a girl must become sling
or be slung.
--
Sarah Carson's poetry and other writing have appeared in The Rumpus, The Slowdown, Guernica, The Missouri Review, and The Christian Century, among others. She is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, including How to Baptize a Child in Flint, Michigan (Persea Books, 2022).
Sarah Carson's poetry and other writing have appeared in The Rumpus, The Slowdown, Guernica, The Missouri Review, and The Christian Century, among others. She is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, including How to Baptize a Child in Flint, Michigan (Persea Books, 2022).