Embers
I was a great collaborator with
wartime cigarettes, an artist
with the conical scream-sighs
of life under bombardment.
I trust you more under
a broken street lamp, under
a shattered sky space,
where time stills
Than I ever did at dinner
tables pushed together on
sidewalks where some grand
conspiracy was hatched beneath
Breath you took in so
easily, not as now with
cracked plaster, mulched brick,
petroleum haze.
Songbirds
If I go first,
in the next life as a sparrow,
I’ll wake you with song.
Our love will be simple then,
no more ink-black stains
cluttering the picture,
no more shattering shouts
breaking silence of summer hours.
We’d still have distance,
but sharpened points would be gone,
leaving just the echo of sweet language unheard.
I could touch you from afar
through windows and wires,
and love you through air in morning light.
Carter Vance is a writer and poet originally from Cobourg, Ontario, Canada currently resident in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. His work has appeared in such publications as The Smart Set, Contemporary Verse 2 and Plentitude, amongst others. His debut novel, Smaller Animals, is available from Roundfire Books. He writes occasionally at his Substack, A Place of Unreality.