Lauren K. Carlson

Stoneware Plate And Flaked Salt

make the most of your mean-
time:
Since the blossom’s wilt
comes with the bud—

the orange yolk you broke.
How the tulip’s screaming
yellows sooth rage

when your offspring don’t heed.
Consider the eye an open
surface to which leftover

cereal bowls with their soggy
grains stick, but also bouquets,
violent florals. Small

grubby palms reach for cut blooms
and you resent porcelain for being inanimate.
Is fracture really the worst that could happen?
Tell your children it’s okay to cry,

we lose track every day,
set poison out for mice.
let poison have its way,

millions of ways.
There’s not one day cruelty isn’t.
If the world could run on ruin

as mean-
time, there’d be no such thing.

Lauren K. Carlson is a poet and spiritual director living in Manistee, Michigan. She is the author of Animals I Have Killed (Comstock Review’s Chapbook Prize 2018). Her work has recently appeared in Crab Creek Review, Salamander Magazine, Terrain, The Windhover, and Waxwing. In 2022 she won the Levis Stipend from Friends of Writers for her manuscript in progress. Her writing has been supported by Tin House, Napa Valley Writers Conference and Sewanee Writers Conference. She currently serves as editor for Tinderbox Poetry Journal and holds an MFA in poetry from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

https://www.laurenkcarlson.com/