D e a d P a p e r

Poems

CAROLYN KELLEY is currently studying for her Ph.D. in English at the University of Florida. She has a Master of Arts in English from the State University of New York and has had poems published in The Aroostook Review and The Great Lakes Review.

CAROLYN KELLEY

Prints

Can you imagine a path
Well-tread with your past
Shoes – patent-leather Easter
Shoes, high-heeled tits and ass
Pumps, comfortable sandals

All with worn out soles.
Different shoes marking the
Streets, playgrounds, bicycle and
Car pedals – carpeted floors – Sand

All marks intertwined and vanishing
Each step scuffing up soles
With each step – a jolt up the spine
Degenerating –

Growing older – time subtracted
From an unknown sum – the
Equation not yet known
X marks the spot

The signifier of my death
Although it will be a positive number
It may result from a bundle
Of negative ones – no matter

How many times I walk the same path
I cannot unmark my past prints
I cannot wash them away nor
Think them away

Or laser them away
Like a tattoo of an old lover’s name –
A lover who has left me
On the path alone

His soles mark my path – know the way
Better than I know myself
Like my past prints
He, in other shoes, leaves marks

I scrub, I sweep, I burn, I wash and
Mostly I analyze.
But the prints do
Not alter.

Copyright 2008 deadpaper.org, Tim Gilmore

Jo Carlisle, contributing editor and web design