Carolyn Srygley-Moore-

I Have Seen Her, he said
 

                           I have seen her he said           the girl
with black hair jagged as spider-legs
walking with          a black book chained to her eyes
language chained to her hips.
                         I have seen her he said.
muttering as God must mutter           talking
to herself he said.      She seemed  a glassblower's vase
in her Poe T-shirt:          WHAT WOULD POE DO
it read        a telltale heart as the emblem
around which all logic revolved.
                         O I have no illusions       he said
she could never love a man of need like myself.
Yet I have seen her        her torn Levis
disparaging the mention of a certain truth
as truth is never certain.
                                                  Yes
I watched her from my car            parked before the pink dunes
began            I watched her from my car
as one watches a random mote of ash
as one sets fire to the           sea
She was one without history.
It was dark:                 the moon could not disentangle herself
from her own ventricles of light        hinged doorways
pulsing  pulsing.


Man is a Social Animal, she said  

I worry about everything       you say.
If the curtains are translucent      as water is
if our forms are bent as a fallen stick
to the onlooker.         You know, the cat
provokes the dog:  struts about the house
bats a bottle cap
as the dog, watching          trembles.
I worry about everything.
On the other side of the windshield
all is the norm
North Korea     has backed down.
Isolation works             as a tool
by denmother & world powers alike.
Man is a social animal              the anthropology major
said              in the kitchen
as she poured herself a vodka.
What book is that from            I said
& walked the stairs to my room
where the graveyard               existed
in Rilke & Hemingway &
I know it is that simple, really:        the new dog
bites the older dog
& gets the back turned toward her.
I worry about everything.
It is March              our first storm
for the season.         The March hare
rattles his paws.
It is that simple, really.
Even the hound-dog purrs.
 

The Question of Photographs, Distance, Mistakes
   

I have sketched, drawn, painted
the blue oak  outside the farmhouse       some streets down
some years away. The art instructor said
"the sign of an artist is the ability to take a mistake
               & make something of it!"     I worked for a month
on the soldier's left boot         until it was such an error

I changed it to a waiting dog.        Still, the essence
remained:    One soldier holding another
as one bears a vase of roses still-living,
roses on the verge of brittle black.
            Yes the second soldier was weeping.
It was a photograph            jungles of 60's Vietnam.       I always wonder

how photographers distance themselves
from the subject., ie., the soldier weeping,
the girl afire running the streets of Saigon:   & pause, snap
the picture.            One has to have a sensibility
                of what defines history         I guess
our perception of history. I gave that pencil drawing to a girl

in college; perhaps it has burned
like a safehouse to the sandy yellow ground.

Carolyn Srygley-Moore is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Songs Scared from the Conch // as Voices Carry. She is a Pushcart and Best of the Web nominee.  Widely published, Carolyn lives in Upstate New York with her husband, daughter, and three dogs. Interviews with Carolyn are accessible via the Google machine..