Wendy Taylor Carlisle
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and writes in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the 2020 winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Award for The Mercy of Traffic and this spring, Doubleback Books reprinted her 2008 book, Discount Fireworks, available free at: Doubleback Books. Her website is www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com. Photo by Greg Comnes.
is family style, is by the book.
Is none of my bid'ness.
They have a joy-free smoke,
a homemade drink.
Many of you have already been taken,
some of us anticipate the slack whoosh and hum
that signal alien arrival above just-cut crop circles.
Many of you, back in your cubicles, wear half-smiles,
I keep my little principality tidy. Like Genghis Kahn’s nuns, I am a part of a war nation, having no real land or location, taking pain out in ever widening circles. Shouldn’t I travel as the hordes did, living off the conquered, carrying only my broom, a war nation against my own. It doesn’t take much really. You only have to be hungry and willing to do what it takes to get fed.
Pages
