Nathan Wade Carter

FRAGRANT CLOUD

Then    a blooming began.

Flossing in the bathroom,
bird perched on tub,
watching you spit water into the sink,
looking at you in grey underwear,
wishing you wanted to inflate that balloon
and glue me to the mattress.

These petals are petering out,
this wiener is wilting,
my blush blackening.
This fragrant cloud is floundering.

If you will,
fish me out of this pit.

Are we missing it? Independence
day.

UNEXPLORED UNEXPLORED

The studious
ice  shelf
cracks knuckles,
cracks books,
nose dives
page waves,
beluga narration.
There is some amount of stone under this.
There is plain water
with pink fish
with antifreeze blood.
There are urchins inching.
There is ice lightning.
 

I vote
to leave
the unexplored unexplored.
Let us
not cultivate the world
to death. Let us not write an elegy
for the bees.

Right now my favorite souvenir is a perfume bottle of a girl holding a cat found at a junk shop on the Oregon coast. Her dress is dull pink glass. From the arms up she and the cat are light pink plastic. The perfume smells like baby powder. 

Nathan Wade Carter is a poet, musician and artist living in Portland, Oregon. His poems have been published in Potluck Magazine, and are forthcoming in Powder Keg Magazine. He writes and performs music under the name Purrbot. His music can be found on Bandcamp and Spotify. Find him online at nathanwadecarter.com.