Poetry by Ashton Carter

                          Alexandru Paraschiv CC



​
​A Portrait of Erin Lindsey

I.

I remember that time
you stole mom’s scarf and wore it to school
with your Avenged Sevenfold ball cap
cocked diagonally across your head,

and you smashed Kyle Greenwood into a locker
for calling me a faggot (I think he pissed himself),
laughing as he limped away,
laughing as you got detention.

Or that time you walked through traffic
despite my protest (or maybe in spite of it),
smiling as car horns blared,
smiling at my cowardice.

You, already the heavyweight champion
of making little boys cry
and having a strange, Herculean irregard
for your own safety;

and I, demented,
receiving all the encouragement
and all the endless little lies
about “my bravery”.

II.

The baby who would punch you in the face
turned into the girl who would punch you in the face,
turned into the woman who would punch you in the face,

turned into someone capable of very careful love.
Someone who once made me bleed (profusely),
who wears a studded leather jacket

and a bright wide anger. She has enough to stop
a train and each one of it’s passengers--
this similar smile (I don’t escape) 

that presses her lips into the cat-head
on principle of summers without a stop to the sky 
or else a reckoning, and yet, still,

I am back here on the trail
in the woods behind Gram’s house,
beneath those red and white cones hanging

from the powerline, thinking about swimming
by that public beach with the big mother turtle
who ate fingers and toes,

thinking about that first ochre-tinged taste of Crown
from mom’s old china cabinet. I turn around to leave,
the sun behind me,

still wearing clothes two sizes too big
still with a memory of your baby fingers,
those indecipherable pink digits

too often balled into a fist.

III.

When I hear the word “junkie”
I think about what it really means
to be waiting for a phone call--
one where (I imagine) I am told

you are in need of my organs
or my blood, or the right words
or my collection of tackle
or my sweaters that are too big for you.

Or the recipe for mom’s butter tarts,
or maybe a book about love
or the marrow from my bones
or something I can give you--

that it will fall to me to bear you witness
to watch the door for imposters and thieves
and press my thumb against your eyes
and watch your body being put in a furnace

and please forgive me for this
because sometimes I am furious,
sometimes I just want to grab your shoulders
and shake the poison out of you

I want you to remember what it was like
before things fell apart. 

IV.

I saw you crossing the intersection
at Bank and Wellington, trailing the sun
in your hair

drinking Timmie’s and smiling at the old man from Arnprior
who sells lilacs and roses out of his pickup truck,
who always smells like soil

and calls you Bella. I watch you
watch the world reflected in your eye,
magnificent. You work around the corner,

three minutes from Parliament,
taking notes in a faceless skyrise and living
in a shitty little apartment near Britannia

where you are content buying succulents
and kitty litter, end tables, a string of lights
to hang over your balcony--

you arrive home in the evening, water
your plants, pet your orange cat. There is a note
pushed under your door

from your landlady. Maintenance is coming
tomorrow at three, on the nose
to inspect your life and report any damages.


​

Ashton Carter is a Canadian poet and writer from Northern Ontario who is concerned about your impression of him. He spends his time being talked into buying $103 worth of skin cleanser while at the mall (he was there to get pillowcases) and angling on clever gifts to get his boyfriend.

---