Poetry By Carleen Tibbetts

Matthew Bellemare CC




the door is not a simple proposition 
after Jay Besemer

the habit of body/bastes itself in its own juices/my dream book/my names for bones/the borderkissed shoals of our voices/a throat opening/a voice scabbing over/so few mouths to take my word/a bomb filled with starlight/yr shimmering media/tendered like a slip of flesh/the shape of anything can be changed/the steely ice of terror & loss/tenderness is something to belong to





when you breathe, listen for the horses in your chest
after Jay Besemer

make space between words/and let me enter/fill yourself with the thing you have named/be a ripe muscle of choice/surrender to the lump of night beneath yr tongue/tomorrow you will still happen/tomorrow you will still be emotions existing in unstructured time/there is never a time to not reach for a word/love is a private thing/verging on nasty & violet/long and inexhaustible as hair

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Carleen Tibbetts is the author of four chapbooks and two full-length collections, most recently Dossier for the Postverbal (Carrion Bloom Books, 2023). Her work has appeared in Sink, jubilat, The Pinch, Forklift Ohio, Dreginald, Deluge, Broken Lens, and many other publications.  She edits poetry for Dream Pop Press.