Karla Huston

December 30, 2017

“Seeker” by Karla HustonPosted by

Karla Huston

SEEKER

First it’s the centipede I kill downstairs
and then it’s the one who runs of into the dark
while I decide a piece of toilet paper
isn’t big enough to crush him.
Next I notice my dog has
scratched cracks in the carpet looking for a
place to pee and those black smudges, mosquitoes
squashed on the wall and
then I smell them. Rotten potatoes.
I find them trapped in plastic, bleeding
white and acrid, sopping up the bag
that holds them, dripping on the floor.
As I carry the remains to the compost heap,
the contents seep onto my hands,
and I wonder what could stink worse
than rotting potatoes—maybe
paper mill sludge, hot manure, unbathed
old women, crematoriums smoldering
with bodies, the hopper of a garbage truck.
read a book once about a man who compacts
trash for a living, most of the life spent
in a bunker where rubbish rains all day,
where he compresses a tempest of waste
into tense bundles. One day he crushes a load
of meat wrappings—pink butcher’s paper
peppered with scraps and flies—their cobalt
bellies fidgeting in the waste and as the jaws
of the hydraulic press close, the flies hang on, stuck
dumb to the blood, smeared forever
in a bale of wreckage. A frenzy of flies
clings to the potatoes in my compost,
so alive now they quiver in the sun
embroider the scene with metallic singing
and those eyes watching me.

—from Rattle #16, Winter 2001
Tribute to Boomer Girls

__________

Karla Huston: “Reading poetry is like a walk in a prairie: Black-eyed Susans bobble in a sea of green, Queen Anne’s Lace doilies float above the leather tongues of burdock. There is a surprise in every turn of word, and in every phrase and line, something new grows.” (web)

Rattle Logo

April 23, 2013

“Spiritual Warfare” by Karla HustonPosted by

Karla Huston

SPIRITUAL WARFARE

I’m always thinking about Lot’s wife,
wonder what her neighbors thought
when she packed up her tunics and cooking pots
and left town without so much as a fare thee well.
Dave, the guy I work with says, “It’s because
she was a sinful woman in a sinful town.
You know where the word sodomy comes from.”
I tell him, “Sodomy’s been made legal in Texas.
I read it in the paper yesterday.”
Dave has been known to get down on his knees
and pray before a computer, but it never seems
to work because it’s always messed up.
“You see, Dave, if she’d had a name, maybe someone
could have called to her, maybe she might
not have turned back.” I’m obsessed with this,
it’s true, but I can’t get the no-name-pillar-of-salt thing
out of my head, and this woman
who probably left with wash on the line
and goat stew simmering on the fire.
And, then there are those two daughters,
who later lay with their father, there being no
other men worth their salt in that mountain town
where they ended up. “Good thing she wasn’t around
to see that kind of sodomy,” I say. “Women
need guidance. Remember Eve?”
I tell him, “Let’s agree to disagree on this.”
He glares at me; his face turns red; pimples
stand out like, like angry mountains, I think.
“Beside, Dave, Lot lingered—he lingered,
and God took mercy on him. I want
mercy for her. And a name, Dave,
a name for God’s sake. Please call her
something besides ‘Lot’s wife’.”
Dave takes my hand, says, “Kneel with me
and let’s pray for you, my disagreeable friend,
and for all those sick people in Texas.”
Meanwhile, the computer flashes:
this program has performed an illegal operation.
“How about Loretta?” I ask, thinking of my best friend
from high school. I shuck off his hand and add,
“It’s a good name, and Mary’s been used.”

—from Rattle #21, Summer 2004

__________

Karla Huston: “Reading poetry is like a walk in a prairie: Black-eyed Susans bobble in a sea of green, Queen Anne’s Lace doilies float above the leather tongues of burdock. There is a surprise in every turn of word, and in every phrase and line, something new grows.” (web)

Rattle Logo

March 13, 2012

“Cheap Talk” by Karla HustonPosted by

Karla Huston

CHEAP TALK

While talking to students about aging
and sex the other day, I read disgust on their lips
when they considered parents and grandparents
having it. One kid said he couldn’t imagine
an old guy actually getting it up, not to mention
getting it in as if in were a destination on a wrinkled
map—hotel no-tell in a dusty town in Ohio. All that
cheap talk, their snortling and knowing smiles. Like sex
was only for the young and beautiful and doing it
was beautiful to see which, of course,
it isn’t. All those upended parts, privates
exposed, the inside body smells, the playground
between two sewers, the plunge and grunt, posturing
for position. The worry about fit and flattery,
performance and         review.
The act so animal like, ball and socket,
tab and slot push and shove         bang and
cushion. Of course no one thinks
about that—the acrobatics, the open mouths,
the hard wetness, the way it feels when man enters
the deep slice, the filling vessel         the hopeful work
to get to where it feels so damned right.

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
Tribute to the Best of Rattle

__________

Karla Huston: “Reading poetry is like a walk in a prairie: Black-eyed Susans bobble in a sea of green, Queen Anne’s Lace doilies float above the leather tongues of burdock. There is a surprise in every turn of word, and in every phrase and line, something new grows.” (web)

Rattle Logo