Rumored Disappearance
Negative Entropy
Carmen Sternwood
Worshiping at the Shrine of Casablanca
Caught in the beam like
a helicopter spotlight chases a fugitive
through the sleep night houses
in my last nightmare meal
of extinct foods –
the past will be forgotten
and we will wander like
a thru-street that finally ends
where the Christmas tree blinks your name
as if it's the last power outage
of the last year in a box we painted
in bright blacks and whites – look
through the lens and forget
what cannot be forgotten.
She hid in the alley.
She held a bird’s nest aloft.
She faltered with the stars.
She won't understand the obvious message.
I imagined a life full
of what I once shredded, what
I meant to chop into pieces,
boil like an ocean, a place
near the fire, a beach
where I became glass, where
the circuitry, blackened by misuse,
winds itself up, turns
silver again: it’s growing fangs
and studded with jewels. I sat down
at this table and ate what was
set before me: petals and lights – I once
destroyed a book as a curse. When it is
put back together, I swallow
it like an oyster or maybe
the words become
that part of nature made clear,
made real.
What does the hat check girl get for a tip?
The Big Sleep
Fully clothed and wasted with
a dead man at her feet -- oh yes,
he's cute and it is at this point
in the film that I get up to eat
the caviar left over from Casino
night where I lost everything
then got it back at gunpoint.
She's sucking her thumb again
and I have to wonder
or decide that these women
have the control I've always wanted.
She's a feral kitten standing with the twin
powers of sexuality and madness,
asleep in the forest
passing judgment and drinking rye.
It's time to really think
about the hat check girl, about
what she deserves,
what we all deserve.
Worshiping at the Shrine of Casablanca
No regrets,
none. I came for the waters
and this could be the end
of a complicated friendship:
that was my last thought as I
registered at the door, chose
various panels and events, all
must-see like a conflagration
or a war we watch with great
nostalgia. Acting out scenes
in the hotel lobby, dressed like
our favorite characters, we sing
La Marseillaise, drink champagne,
lose at roulette – it’s a beautiful thing.
I fell off the dais after a lengthy
talk about fire and film. It was not
well received. This was clearly
the wrong context to tell the world:
I won’t regret it. Not today, not
tomorrow and never for the rest of my life.
Dana Curtis’ second full-length collection of poetry, Camera Stellata, was published by CW Books. Her first full-length collection, The Body’s Response to Famine, won the Pavement Saw Press Transcontinental Poetry Prize. She has also published seven chapbooks: Book of Disease (in the magazine, The Chapbook), Antiviolet ( Pudding House Press), Pyromythology (Finishing Line Press), Twilight Dogs (Pudding House Press), Incubus/Succubus (West Town Press), Dissolve (Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press), and Swingset Enthralled (Talent House Press). Her work has appeared in such publications as Quarterly West, Indiana Review, Colorado Review, and Prairie Schooner. She has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the McKnight Foundation. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Elixir Press and lives in Denver, Colorado.
