Mark DeCarteret

The Year We Went Without Winter

We didn’t know what to wear. What euphemism or hue. To throw off the snow. Where
it was whitest. Blowing in from the west. Nearly blue. Where it would soon thaw. How
thin we were. How so less ourselves. And so unworthy of the sun. We didn’t know what
to think. Or blink back. Into our brains. Where it was once written. It would turn into rain. Didn’t know who our twin was. Who its shadow. We’d heard where the wind. Had
a hundred words. For what has been done to the world. We heard where it had. Not
the one.

Mark DeCarteret’s poems have appeared in over 500 magazines including AGNI, The American Poetry Review, Asheville Poetry Review, BlazeVOX (which recently published the first chapter of his novel Off Season), Boston Review, Caliban, Chicago Review, Fence, Gargoyle, Hole in the Head, Map Literary, On the Seawall, Plume, and Nixes Mate (which recently published his seventh book of poetry lesser case). As well as 30 anthologies. Among them, American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press), Places of Passage: Contemporary Catholic Poetry (Story Line Press), and Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998 (Black Sparrow Press). He performs with the Dadaist troupe Carteret Voltaire. And plays drums and sings with Codpiece.