On video the shooter
has shot and
flinches the shot
recorded
the police hitherto
notified the
wrong man a suspect
with his particular
way of appearing
walked
through the beat-up
world loose
leather jacket CB radio
to his ear who-
ever exits now pursued
by echoing foot-
fall after the shot after
the ambulance
left television crews
aspired to a broad
interpretive framework
as the frame
aspired to be liminal
to act as scheme
and sentence
the authorities
wish we wouldn’t panic
at the margins
the economy will
flounder they say
on a smaller scale
next time
if flounder it must
a fish reconstructs
from association
its familiar path
up the streambed
like an antique
club of factionalism
credulous
to heredity we do not
care where
the shot came from two
planets colliding
was reason to stare
at the sky
that we could thump
on the railroad tie and
watch ants spill out
was reason to thump
some reproductions
are not so flawed
as the original
would we witness
the video again
if our constitution
wasn’t numb to
the faculty we share
with the shooter
we have flinched
that the thieves stole
a flowerpot
and left the masterpiece
was reason to
sing and amidst these
losses there were
many birthdays
too much earth
to view all the tape
our eyes wide
in each chamber
we watch movies
movies movies though
culture has
its critics this is how
we are enlarged
as Shelley said
by a sympathy
when the impulse is
to recoil.
LIKE Indigenous Features of the Landscape
A parachutist dangles from
a lamp post. Two soldiers
stroll through the touristy area.
One rifle was made in Russia.
One was made in France.
How they got from there to
here is how the war began.
SAID AUSTERLITZ
If the shortest distance between
two points is the poem,
more beautiful is the arc,
said Austerlitz, and he said so leaning back
from the table where he spoke
of boats and wine
and whatever else could be judged
by its provenance, as in
the weather. I looked at a cloud
and asked, Where do you come from?
West, said Austerlitz, I would pay most
or that view: an office tower,
flag half-mast above the plaza where
I really think—don’t you? said Austerlitz—
there should be a fountain,
but the drought, he said, we are saving
water, we won’t let the flag touch
the ground. If only, he mused,
we were more willing to spare
the animals. I read a story, said Austerlitz,
where a man shot a sheep
but had to get the sheep home.
He had to carry, said Austerlitz,
the sheep on his back
through bear country. Just listen, he said,
nodding to the next table,
as a woman spoke to her date:
We don’t really have killers in France,
but we have many unsolved crimes,
and I thought, because Austerlitz
urged me to listen, that one—but which?—
was scarier than the other.
On the promenade, the telescopic lens
offered a promise: TURN TO CLEAR VISION,
and I did. I saw a cross section of sky, silhouette
of the roof’s potted baobab,
wind shaking the evening’s tall grasses…
—But anyway, said Austerlitz,
I haven’t slept in months…
haven’t found the world fit, really,
for sleeping. Do you want to hear
a joke? he said. He said the Lord said,
Is my name not enough?
He said He said, I sent my son
because he could throw
a good parting. Anyway, said Austerlitz,
we have lost the near distance.
The wind sock, he said,
do you think it will hold the breeze
all night in our absence?
Would you, said Austerlitz,
allow it to? But this wasn’t meant
to be commentary
on what is permitted.
We ate dove braised in red sauce.
You’ll love it, said Austerlitz,
I loved it once myself.
Originally from coastal Maine, Bill Carty lives in Seattle, WA. He has received poetry fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Artist Trust, the Richard Hugo House, the Sorting Room, and Jack Straw. He is the author of Huge Cloudy (forthcoming from Octopus Books) and the chapbook Refugium (Alice Blue Books). His poems have recently appeared (or will soon) in the Boston Review, Ploughshares, Pinwheel, the Iowa Review, Conduit, the Volta, Oversound, and other journals. He is Web Editor at Poetry Northwest.