I Now Have a Patreon

In preparation for some (hopefully) upcoming projects in the new year, I have decided to set a Patreon account for myself here: https://www.patreon.com/cartervance

All of my content will always remain free to the extent that I am able to control that, but if you've ever felt the work posted here, or the other stuff I have done online, was worth something, consider pitching a couple of dollars my way.

2 New Poems

Jazz at Green Mill

The air of smoke, of gangland
auras passed long since into
myth maps, legend books,
hopes to still me to these
wooden walls, sticky hearts
going in time to upbraid
themselves with old tales spun
in weaver’s haste with
sloppy finish.

Arisen, bass tones go up-down
off table legs, off chair cushions,
into night glasses,
flecked with cold air brandings.

Dish soapy, clearer things
run close to tops, making me
break a touch red, break a touch
too flopping for comfort,
jelly-legged in back-page memory
of Paris cabdrivers,
people you wave to on some dead end
street and curse in hushed breathing.

All that, though, to one side
thrust, thrown as tube bags,
there was still the crisp
of hon, the strike of
string, to trust in.

Mangos by the Roadside

Blended of lemon custard,
sea air’s salt

taste comes to lip,
then dances for,

red-shining quiet
of afternoons that don’t

choke with smog of years,
evenings unbent to city incandescence.

It danced, just as you said
my eyes were showing more

blue than I wanted,
more blankness than experience.

1 New Poem

Glass Castles

It felt as things did in
the New World,

a smell of fresh paint, possibility,
wafting through window cut-outs,

the taste and Spring fizz
of Coca-Cola on ice.

There was no old stone
to these wining places,

bare a huff-puffing gasoline
leakage down sideports, down blindly,

to water that cut loose a
churning, a restless sense for home.