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Visit my FTP site:  ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/Roller/  <--click
Click, or put the address into your browser.  More poems are there.
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                                                love letter
                                            by Carrie Wright


*from all boys to all girls who "hold their hands close to their chest"*


praying mantis, accidental fire, wasp killer, how do I find you?
fact slows like a lost watch against my guesses.
*maybe this time i will roll a seven.*
would you like that?  a seven?
a rose that pays itself off perfectly?  a rose that begins with a lucky          
//feeling?
between hard truth...
*five card stud, nothing wild*
...and supposition...
*iÕll see your raise*
...imagination is my monologue to you
*you have a pair of bullets, donÕt you?  you think i have a flush?  will you          
//fold?*

you do not answer with September skin, plier mouth, ocean hands, full          
//house eyes.
you fall into grass, laughing, waiting for rain
expecting to be attended by god and the saints, themselves.
a misguided phrenologist, full of prayers and expectations,
i define your forehead, palming the red, brown orange curls there.
agreeing with confused colors.
you lead, then leave me, a mapless pilgrim.
still, I look through your discarded magazines, keys, bowls of fruit to          
//learn cartography.
*Wanna dance?*
that seems silly.
*Wear my sweater.*
too implicative.
*Hungry?*
food is not romantic.
*Take my boyhood.*
melodramatic.
*I burned my sheets in a metal garbage can last night.*
*The smoke disappeared up into last years unkept promises.*
*I almost caught my eyebrows on fire.*
closer.

I do not know what or how to offer you a thing, an instant, an expression          
//of this curiosity.
I chop into text, mistaken by my assumption that thinking means          
//something more than
"Thank you.  Now I can see you far more properly.  still I wait here for your          
//thinking to lift 
into me.  Find me among these fictions, please.  All I do is wait."

i will strain blackberries onto your non-blankness.
i will hold your neck beneath my singing quite breathing.
Open.  Open.

from the audience, I am coming.
from row 9, seat D.
No longer hypnotized, discouraged or concerned
with anything but the give of your tranced body and its answers.

*how many more childrenÕs books will you receive from lovers?*
*family introductions?  midnight phone calls?
Now I am arrival,
your answers thumb tacked to my chest.


- Carrie Wright


[The * symbols appearing in the text were not placed there by the author.  
They were added by the poster to indicate italics in the original text.  
Indented lines with double slashes // appearing in the text indicate that 
the line above runs farther to the right than my word processor allows.  
The line should be considered a continuation of the previous line.  - Ed.]


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For more poetry visit:
ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/Roller/  <--click
http://www.angelfire.com/al2/willdockerypoems/index.html
http://www.asstr.org/~Roller/index.html
     (It is case sensitive, i.e. type Roller, not roller)


love letter is copyright 2001 by Carrie Wright


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