Stephen Caratzas- Three Poems

TUESDAY'S BRIDE

I can see taking Monday off too
to get yourself psyched up
and turn the whole thing into
a long weekend

You owe yourself that much
having bought your own ring
then convinced your mother somehow
this guy was a spectacular catch

After all her years of worry
that you might die uncleansed of sin
or abandoned just as she was
there is now a measure of relief

In the iPhone pictures taken
outside the City Hall chapel
you smile on a Tuesday like it's a Friday
your snared husband is all nerves and sweat

Your mother looks the most frightened
but not by this more by life in general
she is genuinely happy inside
that you are not yet showing

*  *  *

YOU THINK THAT IT IS A SECRET BUT IT NEVER HAS BEEN ONE

The fortune cookie thinks 

you need to be punished

for years of "in bed" codas

If you came to see the sea

well the water's closed today

and tomorrow too possibly

There is an office killer loose

crouched near the fax machine

some people call her boss

I'm a monsieur for hire

I'll give you French attitude

out the ass all day long

How many times have you

wandered beneath the dark

only to emerge into darker?

*  *  *

THEIR WILL HEARD BY THE WORLD

No I was full and nobody 

for all with a sigh

"It will be nice."

They didn't mean anything 

tying up a gay, prancing

ponderous God

seen always trotting along

tired not caring

what happened to me

in this world I feel 

that going through

whatever happens

some in society knew

how I feel with God

contempt

my spirit didn't consider

the matter at all

I feel sure like that

it settled here

a few years ago

and has been its own 

ever since the street 

spread out and mothers 

here go hovering 

to the fourth generation 

lots of young boys scramble 

out of the nests 

go off and decide

to grow up their will

heard by the world

*  *  *

Stephen Caratzas is the author of It Will Be A Train (2004), The Incredulity Tour (2005), and Past Present Suture (Drifting Man Press, 2011). His work has appeared in the tiny, Terra Incognita, Maintenant 6, and numerous online journals. He plays guitar in the band Gert Fröbe and currently resides in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.