R. S. Carlson   
R. S. Carlson teaches introductory linguistics, literature
survey, and poetry courses at Azusa Pacific University,
Azusa, California.  Waiting To Say Amen, his 36- poem
collection reflecting journeys with friends and family
through cancer, Alzheimer's and spiritual quest, was
released in July 2010 through Lulu.com and is also
available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  Since last
appearance in Munyori, other Carlson poems have
appeared recently in Re)verb (print), and the online
journals The Copperfield Review,  Forge, and Poetry
SuperHighway.
    R.S. Carlson's Poetry


On Another MIA Return


Wishing for some bone fragments
or a belt buckle to arise from under grass roots

that feed blades gray-green
into winds working inland from the coast…

…wishing for some hint of the broad cup
of brain pan -- like a pottery shard --

…wishing for a small shaft of rib, radius or femur
split away from the rest when the shell first burst…

…wishing for a grim finger of mandible
still clenching a molar mineralizing under the laterite…

…wishing for any telling thing to loft into light
on a searcher’s shovel for the sifting screen….


                       ***

In the motorcade
for the one boxed home,

striped pall draped
interim to interment,

salute the colors flitting wind above the limousines,
venerate the folds come to stars tucked into triangle;

wish return…even pray …for the others you remember --
long since listed “Body Not Recovered” --

…the others sent out, mission secured with thermite…
especially remember them, and remember well

how thermite burns –
to at least two thousand degrees….


as if… as if…


…as if to say she would, or
perhaps would not…

…as if it would make a difference
if she turned toward the window then…

…as if it were the moment the cloud cover
opened for a sun shaft on the street she would see…

…as if that truck -- at the moment she turned toward
the window -- passed through the sun shaft on the street…

…as if from inside the house at that moment -- sun glare on
truck windshield --  she could see…

…as if there were a face behind the glare to see -- and
eyes to answer eyes -- as if…

…but she…and she… and even if it… still…
as if… as if… as if….


Ubilam

They’ll stand up through the moon roof with a mini-cam –
No simple stills with Kodaks from their limousines –
Jaguars outrun Fords in Ubilam!

The strip mall theater burns?  No source for ham
on rye for miles?  Mansions have private screens,
and cooks “hors d’oeuvre” to whim in Ubilam.

A hundred-ninety-five for a pillow sham?
A five-dollar stoneware vase for one-nineteen?
One mustn’t ask a price in Ubilam.

The maid, the gardener, the mechanic grinding the cam-
shaft for the Rolls…feed Hondas gasoline
inland before the drive to Ubilam.

No Chumash now could fish or dig a clam
from beaches fenced for mansions’ seacoast scenes
that private guards secure in Ubilam.

The commoners may share a traffic jam
with Maserati drivers in skin-tight jeans,
but oughtn’t inhale the breeze by more than a gram:
the ocean air costs more in Ubilam.  


                 R. S. Carlson