Poems and Pictures

John Randolph Carter's muse is a restless one. Like his contemporary Mark Strand, Carter was a student of visual art before he became a poet, and his work has been displayed in a number of museums around the nation. He is also a practitioner of graphic design, collage, typography, and African and Afro-Caribbean drum and dance. Most of all, Carter is a dedicated surrealist. In his poems and pictures, he takes the dominant forms in American culture—the clichés, the slang, the everyday objects, the myths, the archetypes, the stereotypes—pulls them from their contexts, and pastes them onto a blank paper canvas. There they take on new meanings, becoming strange and kinetic next to one another. This is Carter's way of illuminating the generative absurdity of the world. His poems and drawings are pleasurable and exuberant, and they profess, above all, the supremacy of the imagination and a profound openness to the human in all of its bizarre forms.

—r. w.

Whether frog or princethe image is me.

Part of me wants togreet the stranger.

Part of me wants tobolt the doorand sound the alarm.

The stranger that's welcomedcomes but once.

The stranger that's rejectedreturns again andagain.

The Fog and the Shadows

The wrist. The waist. The black-and-white western.The whispering thistle. The trembling vessel.The whistle, the pistol, the whimpering waiter.The tumbling bouncer. The pink topless dancer.

The smirk and the snicker. The flickering nightlight.The cake in the hallway. The musical tie tack.The reason for laughter. The negligent night owl.The hoop and the holler. The glasses. The dishtowel.

The end of the hallway. The door with the mirror.The firemen, the con men, the pimps and the winos.The vase with the ashes. The girl in the closet.The plate and the gate and the slow-dripping faucet.

The fog and the shadows. The owl on the tree branch.The frightened prospector with holes in his pockets.The men in the diner. The thin nervous waitress.The pilot, the policeman, the empty light sockets.

The reason for lying. The low hanging stirrups.The popular athlete, the girlfriend, the backseat.The men with long zippers. The women in mourning.The sight gags then suddenly shots without warning.

One Day

While walking in the country one dayI am approached by an enormous cloud of doubt,which blocks out the sun. I feel the temperature drop.I feel unsure, unsteady.

It begins to rainThe birds are wet.The trees are dry.What kind of strange storm is this?

I reach in my pockets for loose changeand discover a rabbit's foot attached to a live rabbit.

I head for the hills.The hills are too steep, so I head forthe canyon, but it's filled with coyotes.

I return to the city where black attack donkeys beckonand frightened freight lurk in the shadows.

I turn down a dark alley,almost pitch black.I hear sounds of chewing.This makes me uneasy.I light a match, and there before meis a table full of political candidateseating their words.

An old man wrapped in newspapersand duct tape appears in sneakerswith stories of wars and celebrity weddings.

He wants to tell me something important.He whispers it in Sanskrit.I recognize the words ta tha ta—suchness.

This Knot Is Not Naughty

In a bar sits a man with his foot in his mouth.He's not hungry.

Grief wags its tail and whimpers in the corner.

Flaccid but useful character actors appearrandomly and are quickly replacedwith uninvited subject matter.

Men in canary costumes say they feel lost.

Men with a big red "M" embroidered on theseat of their underwear feel that, apart from that,they have little in common.

As the days grow shorter, short people begin to worry.Forgotten war veterans exchange false teeth.

People everywhere try to fill a void.They keep throwing things in, but it is...