Haitian by Wahab Jaffer. Courtesy of ArtChowk Gallery
Regret is a deep wound, dark and warm smelling
like yeast swelling or a stack of summer grass.
I wear mine according to the instructions
and perform the role of the wife to voracious reception.
the things I long for are edited out of movies. maybe
they just exist, even less than perfection, like love
and rain at appropriate moments. But this. this is
barely Betamax; obscure with plenty of interference.
long days of dancing pepper. the resistance in hot air.
I remember walking once. the clouds
sinking that day were heavy with salt
water, cast to perfection. Oscar worthy even.
the arrangement of my teeth are proud as piano keys
unbuttoning under the strum of his tongue.
its an awful score to keep track of.
my own tongue’s boot heavy. not pretty. a mud
encrusted trainer, awkwardly tangled
with a wayward sole; lonely and hell-bent on dog shit
and traipsing every step of the world alone:
this is the definition of perverse: great lone shoes
tossed to the gutters of duel-carriageways with no idea
how they got so into the middle of things but a fondness
for the roar of the traffic. some’d say that’s optimism
though not you.
my eyes are not tinted blue but a very precise shade of bleak.
the downturn of my cheek is ever hungry
for the roll of your bastard heartthrob thumb.
~Carla Jones
Carla Jones is a poet and literature student living in Bedfordshire, England. Her poems have been published in Iota, the New Writer, The Emma Press Anthology of Dance and Belleville Park Pages.
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