Cindy Carlson

Magnolia Tree

You licked my neck and called
it light. The leaf fell again
and again we crushed the velvet
against your cowboy shirt, called it
tongue, called it pink slick—

I don’t know if I can say
what it does to me, this
separation in waves, this
diffusion that leaves everything
a sifted version of itself.

You turn to show me the black
tipped inside which makes a star,
I hold it to my ear and it makes
a single note, better yet, a frequency,
which makes it whatever you want.

Then this rice paper version
of the world shreds itself into
a double necked guitar and you
stand playing it into shapes:

a simulated stage, dancers dressed
in sheets of music no one knows, and you
in a sudden wave of nostalgia hold them
together as if it will matter, as if they will
matter into something we can name again.



Cindy Carlson is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop who has been published in Bloom, Sentence, Cactus Heart, Antiphon, among other places. Her poetry manuscript was recently finalist in Kore Press' annual book contest. She currently lives and teaches in Madison, WI.