Vanitas with Hi-Tops
one-room schoolhouse
without a ruler’s bite
the gym someday
wreathed in crepe
convened convexity of
calves line up
out of these how many
neon highlighters done up
out of these how many
royal soles palmed
out of these how many
black white gray eyes up
out of these how many
red
Vanitas with High Wire
the expanse serves
a narrow place
a pocketful of pens
could rain
the oracular court
cable anchors
erase every over
lashed eye
who would pull off
falsetto cauls
are you a ladder
or the hawk?
Carolyn Oliver (she/her) is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books 2024), Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press 2022; selected for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize), and three chapbooks. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, Image Journal, Prelude, Shenandoah, Beloit Poetry Journal, Southern Indiana Review, Consequence, and elsewhere. Born in Buffalo and raised in Ohio, she now lives in Massachusetts, where she is a 2023-2024 artist in residence at Mount Auburn Cemetery.
Author photo: Benjamin Oliver
Image: “Shoreward wind” by JC Alfier
JC Alfier is a poet and photo-artist whose aesthetics are informed by Yoko Mizuki, Francesca Woodman, and especially Katrien De Blauwer.
Pine Hills Review 