HARD Blessings

by Patrick Carrington

ISBN 13: 978-1-59948-115-9
Poetry Chapbook, ~40 pages, $10

***This title was selected for publication after finishing as a finalist in the 2007 MSR Chapbook Contest. ***

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About the Author / Sample / Comments

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About the Author

 

Patrick Carrington is also the author of Thirst (Codhill, 2007), and Rise, Fall and Acceptance (MSR Publishing, 2006), and winner of New Delta Review’s 2008 Matt Clark Prize and Yemassee’s Pocataligo Contest in poetry. His poetry is forthcoming in The Bellingham Review, Tar River Poetry, West Branch, The Connecticut Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and many other journals. He teaches creative writing in New Jersey and serves as the poetry editor of Mannequin Envy (www.mannequinenvy.com).

 

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Samples

 

Pattern

 

After love at night when I can't sleep, I watch you.
You shine with our sweat. I love
that your skin holds me,
after. Like the ocean
in one of your needlepoints,
I feel sewed into you. And being
across the bed from you is light years away,
my far eyes two insignificant stars
you must have stitched as an afterthought.
They settle on your chest and its slow swell.
What binds sparkle to sea binds them
as well. Like the air
you take in as your breasts rise
and fall, the faint heartbeat that ripples them
ever so slightly, they are part of you.
You have woven them onto
the map of your body like silk.

 

Crazy Mabel

 

It was the way she dressed, halfway
between available and abandoned,
lipstick outside the lines, hair coiffed
by a lamp socket. The way she smelled,
perfumed with Chanel and Four Roses.
The way she wobbled, crooked in pumps
and torn hose, brawling with turnstiles,
just enough cash in her purse to make bail-

she'd become that crazy aunt
everyone wants as a kid
who fascinates us like a train wreck
but the grown world wants to lock in the attic.

When she talked you'd imagine
her voice sounded exactly the same,
all shriek and giggle, whether she was
reassuring you no animal had been harmed
in the making of her face
or telling you the damn four-inch heels
set her bunions on fire.
There were clowns in her cheeks
and chatter, glorious picnics in her head,
circuses on every sunny day
with jokes and tricks and blocks
of sharp cheddar, French bread she'd tear
savagely and eat like a Viking. The gashes

she'd torn in the fabric of her life matched
my skinned knees. The answers
she gave to questions I couldn't shape
fit the mess of me like a tailored suit-
without words, she taught me how
to be fine with myself in the moment,
how to color and shape my coming bloom,
how to recognize the hard blessings

of the rain. Even now, I don't think I grasp
the portion of my young burden
she carried, or how much
each minute I spent with her weighed.

 

Lullaby of Atlantic City

 

There are no clocks here. Who needs them?
Not me. After the regular intervals
of heartbreak, scars are the way I keep time.
I count my defects to bring back the night

I drew your scent in, so slowly I thought
I'd never have to give it back. But
as I cross the miles of boardwalk
toward the spot we first made love,
I test each breath for your smell-

every perfume seems familiar,
convinces me you'll be the one
coming around the corner
to offer the fruit of your neck
to my nose, to wade naked with me
into the breakers. You never are-

it's one more Keno girl with spinning cherries
in her eyes. And again, today becomes
a sorry excuse for tomorrow. Again
I end a day in the bed of a stranger,
between spread legs, mean
as the sea that bullies the shore.

No reason any more to carve out territory,
yet I have dreams that sing me
to sleep, that tempt me
with their beauty. And I say
to the dawn, to my shoes, to what beats
inside me-Go on. Be brave. Forget
the timepiece of your body. Forget
that every motion is a game
of chance. Forget
that the first thing you did this morning
was drop cash in a drawer
with a bible in it, and especially forget

those two young lovers there with a knife,
casually leaving their hearts
on a tree trunk. As if they have spares
tucked away. As if they'll never be scarce.

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Comments

 

These poems are about truths--hard truths most--that we each in our own way know. Carrington’s poetry manages this most difficult of tasks, however, he is not just a truth-teller. He’s an exquisitely talented poet, a maker of metaphor, a turner of phrase--refreshingly and unabashedly masculine, but one who will for all of us “…stay/and say grace.”

Cynthia Brackett-Vincent
Editor – The Aurorean

Patrick Carrington's lyric narratives are grounded in a strong sense of the past and fundamental respect for the events that shape our lives. He has a feel for the thoughts and emotions that often pass unrevealed. I can feel this poet's love of language and his deep sense of truth in every poem.

Bob Hicok

 

Indelible images. That's what Patrick Carrington paints when he writes. Sharp angles of contrasting light and dark. Sparks of meaning that illuminate the page like a flashbulb burned on the retina. "It's not like yes is a permanent thing," says Carrington astutely in his poem, "Cul de Sacs," from Hard Blessings. But when it comes to Carrington's ruminations and clear insights into human nature, I rejoin with a resounding, permanent Yes.

Eve Anthony Hanninen,
Poet, Artist, Editor of The Centrifugal Eye.