Artwork © Peter Urkowitz

 

Contentment

My old lady told me I’m not much of a lover.
She said after sex I shake myself off like a dog
that rolled in a puddle, one of those shallow pools
with an oily sheen that glistens in the moonlight.
I don’t listen to her, though. I just paw and paw
and then shake and shake, an old coot content,
on clear nights and at certain angles, to glow in the dark.

 

What is Revealed and What is Left Buried

Whatever is under this pall of snow
won’t hide your secrets forever, she said,
towing the drift next to a dying pine.
What’s underneath is mud and rot, and only
if you dig and keep digging will you hit rock,
and when you do, she said, your bones will shake,
your teeth will rattle, and you’ll wish you’d
just admired the snow, kept the shovel in the shed
and waited for spring when what is revealed and
what is left buried is always and never a surprise.

 

Benjamin D. Carson writes short stories and poems. When not teaching literature at a university, he’s teaching yoga in a prison. Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe. He’s never won a Pushcart, but pushing a cart and yelling “bring out your dead” is on his bucket list.

Peter Urkowitz lives in Salem, Massachusetts, where he works in a college library. He has published poems and art in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Oddball Magazine, Sextant, Molecule, Mantis, Wilderness House Literary Review, Nixes Mate Review, and the Lily Poetry Review. His Fake Zodiac Signs chapbook was published by Meat for Tea Press in early 2020, and he collaborated with Alex Ness to publish Tales of Lost Kingdoms in 2024.