The morning she could not find her hat

Claire looked around the room and out the window,

and fixed her eyes on one persimmon-and-yellow

beak, pushing through a black mask,

          sensing

          what to do next.

Then she who did not match

in the tree of brown finches

dropped into a hole in the bush below.

When Claire called to her husband,

                    come over,

a kerchief of sound flew out.

To help a damsel

slip an arm
into a stringy sweater
at the literary salon,
Claire’s husband rises.

No—
Claire’s not going to smile.

She and this hero are different.
She won’t open morning blinds

before plumbing her mind.
He won’t consider the effect
of his auto-valor.

She concludes he’s numb,
but when she asks about the woman,
he acts damaged.

When the performer plays sax,
her husband’s glad
Claire’s stopped conversing
into his ear on the populated sofa.

Outside, swaying trees have no verdict.

The next day on a town bench,
Claire tells him

this motorcycle outfit is the real you.

He apologizes
for his cigar.
Claire inhales the bluish air.

Seeing Claire’s mouth morph

A goddess secrets a cerulean rock

into Claire’s palm at the party

where figures wearing sequins jib

to be her husband’s lead girl.

On the way home from New York,

after withering, after the mad unsaid,

having become strangers again,

Claire solicits the skyscrapers,

bridges, the lit-up river.

Her plan?

For Christ’s sake, it will be important

to keep faith, after brushing teeth,

after spritzing her sheets, after flipping

to face the window in lace.

After Exupery

Claire’s finding bird names inside her.

Never mind Darwin.

She’ll say it’s perspectival

if asked why, and how

she acquires it,

looking downward, outlining, coloring in eyes.

It’s still excruciating to vanish.

Carla Carlson’s poems have appeared in journals and magazines such as Thrush Poetry Journal, Thimble Literary Magazine, Narrative Northeast, Statorec.com, Derailleur Press, Adelaide Literary Magazine, PANK, Prelude Magazine, Columbia Journal, Yes, Poetry, The Mom Egg, and more. Her chapbook, Love and Oranges, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2015. Her current manuscript, The Opposite of Gravity, was a finalist for the Laureate Prize at Harbor Editions, 2021. Carla is a member of the poetry faculty at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. She has served on the board of directors at Four Way Books, Tribeca, New York.