DRECK

JUSTIN CARTER

CUCUMBER & MINT

Another wooden balcony appeared in my mind & like always, it crashed down, one board after the next, until all we had was a forest of broken wood, a grove of endings. There’s a mist over my eyes, even when they’re closed. I don’t know what I see in the distance, except the faint purple glow of tomorrow, which has seared through my eyelids. Did you know the air tastes like cucumber & mint when all of us are asleep?


SURREALISTIC PILL BUG

It’s just a little ball the first time you see it, the pill bug that’s made a home on the living room futon. You’re a child & it’s kind of cute so you let it stay. What’s the harm, right? It reminds you of the Mimosa pudica in the yard—those plants that shrivel up when you touch them. You’re eight though. You don’t know they’re called Mimosa pudica. You just call them those plants that shrivel up when you touch them. The pill bug’s like an inside version. You want it to stay here forever & for weeks, it does, rolling across the floor when you enter the room, as if trying to say hello. One day, it’s gone, but it left a little note for you. You can’t wait to find out what the pill bug has to say. The paper’s so small & the writing’s even smaller, so you have to get your parents to buy a microscope—you are grateful they don’t ask questions. When you finally go to lift the note, the paper rolls itself into a ball. It stays that way forever.


POEM STARTED THE DAY DAVID LYNCH DIED & FINISHED THE NEXT MORNING

I promise this is not an insult: when I think of David Lynch, my brain goes directly to his role as Gus in The Cleveland Show & the episode where he’s trying to raise money for his niece to attend Drake University. I wasn’t far from there when the news broke. Maybe I could have spotted the school from the interstate if I’d thought to look. It seems like that should be important but I don’t know if anything really is. Today I got to thinking about the pandemic, all those deaths piled up, & how so many of them feel, now, like forgotten relics of a past we don’t want to remember. We no longer revere loss. Forgive me for generalizing again. It’s a bad habit, like smoking Swishers or eating too much cheese before bed. I had a dream that Ruben & I solved a murder by accident. A man asked us to find his missing child, but he knew the whole time there was no longer a child.

Justin Carter is the author Brazos. Originally from the Texas Gulf Coast, he currently lives in Iowa.