Thrush Poetry Journal
  • ABOUT
  • ARCHIVES
  • MARCH 2023
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • AWARDS
  • MASTHEAD

Carolyn Guinzio
​

Crisis Of 

You can spot-lose faith

some even in the fifties

they say hide when mother

approaches the nineties many

days the deep end awaits you

going off to the Devils

Den to be seen again grey

as a ghost pulled back

by force Meanwhile

in Arkansas faith takes

the form of burying

things in unincorporated

parts of the county sending

into slender fingers of land

beyond the reach of the law

passed to annex the burn

barrel and castle ordinance

ordnance burned on the fourth

in a window of hours not window

so much as mere open air




Take It Back

The mailbox is full

and not able to accept

a stick bug trucking so

we swear it wasn't there

five minutes ago we used

up our last re-use the one

you used for the bread

Meanwhile in Arkansas

the primary care doctor

is sticking to her story

full of those are not holes

breaking off pieces of

the unreliable narrator

only meant to stick you

with a bill for nil and no

sense in trying anymore

not to break off the twigs

are not limbs bent in

the back of an empty box




Carolyn Guinzio's most recent collection is A Vertigo Book (The Word Works, 2021), winner of The Tenth Gate Prize and Gold Medal winner for the Foreword Indies Award for Poetry Book of the Year. Earlier collections include Spoke & Dark (Red Hen, 2012), winner of the To The Lighthouse/A Room Of Her Own Prize, and the visual poems Ozark Crows (Spuyten-Duyvil, 2018). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, Poetry and many other journals. Her poetry films have been screened at festivals throughout the world, including the Cadence Festival, where her film was a jury award winner. Her website is carolynguinzio.tumblr.com



​
Return to November 2022 Edition