~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Carolyn Hembree, Featured Poet

     Carolyn Hembree is the author of three poetry collections: For Today (LSU Press, 2024), Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a Plague (Trio House Press, 2016), winner of the Trio Award and the Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award; and Skinny (Kore Press, 2012).

     Her poems appear in Beloit Poetry Journal, Colorado Review, Copper Nickel, Ninth Letter, Poetry Daily, The Southern Review, and other publications. She received a 2016-2017 ATLAS grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents and has also received grants and fellowships from PEN, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and the Southern Arts Federation.

     Carolyn holds an M.F.A in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona and a B.A. in English and Theatre from Birmingham-Southern College. She was born in Bristol, Tennessee, and has lived in New Orleans since 2001. An associate professor in the University of New Orleans M.F.A. program, she was awarded the university’s 2017 Excellence in Teaching Award. Carolyn serves as the poetry editor of Bayou Magazine.

The following poems are from the collection For Today (2024) by Carolyn Hembree, printed with permission from Louisiana State University Press.

 Dizzy Birds Fantasia

Walking the river levee, Kiddo frames “one-eyed bunny clouds” with

her hands. The word cloud means “mass of rock or earth.” I think of

cloud’s close cousin, clot—hello, mural thrombi peeling from vessel

walls, joy-riding my system, playing chicken with my heart, crash.

Her in the pic, I think knee scabs too, how I’d forgotten knees (heal,

open, heal). Comfort, a body knows what to do.

She lets the shoe-store balloon go, wonky departure. Farsighted

views collapse, bend, and come back. Freight train graffiti—

humanoid Princess-General packing heat,

her “cinnamon buns” splattered salt-and-pepper,

flesh dripping over that metal bikini.

The memorial mocks

and moves. I snap a blurry pic. Traffic in, out our parish, drive-in

daiquiri patronage to avenue, avenue streetcar, transformers, frisbee,

loose dogs, no flora or fauna of note. Unless we are of note. And that

horizontal pair with horizon and grounded kite. Bones of kite.

Vascularity of blanket weave. They picnic yet. Our looking to skies

all storm season.

Boat horns beyond the levee. Siri, what is today’s cargo? Here’s

what I found on the Web. I scroll: plywood, coffee, rubber. Sure, but

it’s our currents (water, electrical, streetcar)

all thrill to. We stop at the wild parrot nests,

idle with the Firebird, top-down, “Heart of Glass”

looping between / what I find is pleasing—[ping]

dinner alert. My

phone wallpaper, photo effect Kiddo chose: us smiling, eyes closed,

halo of cartoon blue birds stretched askew to ring our touching

heads. Outgrown with flapping soles, her old shoes slide in this new

box we carry home. Ooh, oh, ooh, oh, fading like the chorus, yet I

too have been controlled through pleasure.

Good day, breezy, outer bands of something grand.

Dusk rolls its shaky cam: flung arms, harlequin

leggings, new high-tops, zigzag tread, voice down a

dirt wall. Faster, Mom—

 Funk Hour Fantasia

Dr. DJ prescribes Funk Hour for weeknight blue funk that oozes

under doorjambs through louvers and keyholes to fill my rooms until

lines I love in books I love smear.

Funk Hour, done thunk enough hour. Dose me, Doc, turn up “Disco

to Go,” let a cosmos riff. Winter orchards blooming and fruiting at

once among white moths glued to fat air giving up the funk. Past

train tracks, the river levee, wharfs, each barge to its berth, each bod

to its lifetime giving up the funk. Landmark corner bar, stretched

leather, streetlights, Lady chapel, crape myrtles, porch swings, prayer

flags, love flag, love bench, my kitchen radio giving up the funk.

Stuff and things and Brides of Funkenstein I let funk me.

Now what? Lost station—giving up the—what’s this

stirring from dark rooms of our digs, or is it

from within, stirring that screws with Doc’s def scrip?

Nope, only Kiddo.

Called forth by our neighborhood soprano’s aria. Oh, deafening

world. Ciao, funky brides! Three-hanky singspiel, hello: Ich folg’

dem innern Triebe, / Ich wanke nicht . . . Bedspread dragged over

barge-board floors, empty net over dry land, I hear before I see O

Leonore-Fidelio clasping the weave at her neck.

Weave that drapes a slight frame, parts at her midline

then makes a train. She opens arms and feet to

show bunny-print PJ’s: I am a flying

squirrel! Caped hero(ine).

She shivers. Closes the bedspread, yawns, leans on a counter, cat

weaving through her legs. Oscillating fans, seething mechanical

heads, again turn my way, one then another, pulling more hot, wet

November air into the ovum that tumbles from transom to transom to

contain us the way time contains us.

Microwave dings. Check her temp with my lips (101, give or take)—

home again tomorrow—do I not work? I fork and butter a sweet

potato, pour her juice. Too much orange, yellow, pulpy sweetness.

Waves me off, picks seeds from a grocery store pawpaw from who

knows where though we grow them here.

Yes, I saw the pomegranates, tissue-swathed dozens in lavender

crates, and my heart swelled with Muzak of desire to untuck bright

seeds from wan catacombs. Yes, I saw the pomegranates at full price,

said keep ’em to the produce aisle, kept rolling—don’t it make my

brown eyes blue—and fell in line with other pedal pushers. Sorry,

baby girl, this pawpaw’s no divine nom-nom.

Wrong fruit. Besides, the devil’s souped-up Mustang

cavalcade would zoom you from his oubliette’s

lap back to this swamp before our old pecan

could lose one appalled

leaf. Funny I never saw—how the parting begins above her torso:

cleft chin, my dad’s, Cupid’s bow lip, flushed cheeks two dimples

each, widow’s peak, cowlick. Waves blown brown then golden by

oscillating fans. More tangles for me. Damned mat at the nape she

won’t let me cut I know without touching.

I know, I wash that hair, I comb that hair with a giant-toothed,

amber-colored comb. She spits a black seed into the basin where I

once bathed her.

April 2020

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.

—“The General Prologue,” The Canterbury Tales

Not big on pilgrimages, yet this fever drifts

from house to house. One leaky pirogue, adrift,

empty, listing to one side, on the bayou.

I look inside my neighbor’s yellow house—joy

of a yellow house, shades up, rainbows chalked

on the walkway under a palm’s moving shade,

palm where wild parrots roost. I play like

it’s mine: my neighbor’s breakfast nook, the playpen,

a last cold bite. A friend was topping off my glass

last night when a rolling violin solo, a show tune,

woke me. Here prone is transitive: to roll the sick

onto their stomachs so they breathe. Transitory strings

receded down the avenue. Above night transit,

lighter now, night birds sang—yes, we hear you again.

I sang along: Maskmaker, maskmaker, make me . . .

not a carnival mask on one you don’t know you know

until they’re in you: breathy sobriquet, dark alcove,

the Quarter. No, the other kind of mask so we breathe

for centuries, alone. Today I walk through another April

shower under April canopies where my thoughts

footnote old lines, Whan that April . . . Parish pilgrims

arrive on winds, on foot, by bike, by car, by bus,

by streetcar. Nowhere to be, no intercessor, I

join them. We roam the neutral ground, weeping,

scrolling news on screens that light our masks,

so many magnolia petals, our hair the wind unscrolls.

Excerpt from the poem “For Today”

Pencil tip in the starting corner

                                                            slide                 up                    up

                                                                        down               down

Taco Night remains pushed aside (salsa jar, weekday place settings

    in plastic and paper)

our pencils catching on the table’s woodgrain

Kiddo makes W, as her copybook instructs

and I add another line to my poem—yes                   this poem

burning in our dark house

dark save a lamp for our pages

and the TV’s glow

Any spring night, lights out, termites swarm streetlamps and drop

their wings

Tonight, any night, I hear a lone owl in the live oak

Boat horn, train horn, streetcar grind, more horns, sirens, dogs

Wednesday, Chanson Night, big bass, accordion from the corner bar

Low clouds over the river levee          any spring night          high river

Huge rigs loom higher and higher

Transmission towers lean more and more

                   Stay there—river in your bed

     train on your rails

     porch swing on your chains

           Write          Whitecap & Sleeper Car

           Write          Downspout & Cloud

Rain in the bucket under our pantry leak (pack watercolors for

        school)

[ping]

[V]    Still waiting on a room. Call tomorrow.

“Like” it                          I do not like it

Reply       Try and sleep. Found your earring.

Come, go, headlights through the skeleton keyhole

I put a graphite lightning bolt through my new lines

Lightning through hurricane shutters—

I remember a lightning strike that started a marsh fire

last year, rotten egg stink I couldn’t wash out

 Write                 hurricane shutter ode

interior lit by lightning, cloud-to-ground

ground-to-cloud—cypress sturdy /

louvers snug, bolt fast // one-two-three-

four / [thunderclap] / (storm a mile off)

Yowls at the screen door—

her vertebrae, spools on a string

the wet cat crouches

in the doorway

grazes my leg

drops under Kiddo’s chair

     spreads her legs

          to groom

          (face last)

Yes, why grieve this unabashed, shrinking side of life, old girl?

[thunderclap]

Kiddo closes her second e

with the attention of an old-world painter

anonymous, centuries ago

in the Black Forest

closing the e of a bride’s name (Margarete or Helga)

on a cuckoo clock face

Bell tower’s seventh strike dilates      quivers             decays

Oscillating fans blow the copybook’s pages bordered with phantom

alphabets, dotted capitals, lowercase for tracing

Copybook, can you help my poem?

Help my poem feel lived in, as transom crosscurrents

gesturing                   indoors                      and out?

D IS FOR DAYS

Copy and complete the sentence, the copybook instructs

I write

D is for days

wiled away

Wednesdays

Taco Night days

haiku heydays

[power flicker]

D is for days poem, pencil, comb, phone, cash, keys, earring in

     pocket (nothing amiss)

D is for days

school duds out

crusts cut, sandwich sliced

cold drinks and dyed eggs in our fridge door

vessel to each appointed lid, and her mug

of milk and honey, unfinished, still-warm

wrinkled skin draping the top, emptied

washed, toweled dry, I hang

chipped mug among

chipped mugs

Days I dump, put back the pantry bucket

Days tiny flies rise from the drain—season of tiny flies just begun!

Days, at last, the nail someone—who were they?—

drove into

the kitchen wall

tugs this apron

                            from my waist

Kitchen radio loses signal

Thunder, sideways rain, creaking branches, horns, boat, car

pop-

  pop

—backfire? firecracker? transformer

blowing?—

pop-

  pop

I check Kiddo’s face—are we okay?—she doesn’t look up

blows eraser dust from the copybook

What has she gotten used to?

guns exist, Inger, yes, but where are the caves to hide our children?

Where will we hide our children in this swamp?

Where will our children hide?

Where will our children hide

from us?

Kiddo

remarkable rain cell

    stalled squall

Days, no, day, today, Wednesday

I tick the box

Yes, my child may participate in quarterly lockdown drills.

[mental note:

under this shallow-pitched roof                      Kiddo              her here

across town, emblem tenebrous

above the grand archway                               her school        it there]

There, in my mind’s eye, her school’s

portico enclosed by screens of rain

wide halls        dark stairwells              classrooms—

but for a light or two

(grading after hours, poor souls)

Rain sheeting from eaves before her

classroom window

Sometime room mother, I have looked

out that window onto

the concrete apron of

playground, puddling

But tonight, as I imagine it, headlights from the avenue sweep across

her classroom

bulletin board              Spring Has Sprung!                white board

alphabet border           alphabetical cubbies             birthday board

morning-circle rug            letter lattice         Math Matters hat rack

handprint hideaway         thinking chair                      reading nook

Days I take down and put back Dad’s overseas letters, back on the

attic shelf with his reel-to-reels, stamp collection, coin collection

wine label collection

8.9.65. Last postcard from his year abroad (night scene: river and

university): The week of goodbye parties is over now . . . sang songs

until daybreak . . . kicks—7 people, boat full of H2O.

    Her pencil dives

through

    the bottom

          line to

 make y

as the copybook instructs

She chews the last bite of our lagniappe praline

[thunderclap]

D is for days    pendulum lights in tough breeze       must sway a bit

Today is Wednesday

[period]

she writes

D is for days we                           remember how we began, Kiddo and

I, naming one thing over another—

last month we read from alphabet

Christensen’s apricot trees exist

apricot trees exist so we began to add

letter by letter, day by day, “azaleas exist

azaleas exist”—azalea, yes, that gushing

bush’s name!—“bees exist, bumble-

bees exist” and three days ago, Sunday

“magnolias exist,” magnolias older than

bees, our riverside neighbor’s magnolia

what about today? “palm trees exist”

“peacocks exist, peacocks exist”

“plantains exist, plantains exist”

parapluies, poems, people, purpose

our azalea of listening smiles and

lets go