Marilyn Bushman-Carlton

A Found Poem

The girl
spotted a pretty pile
of colored sand

Sunday School

Each week the teacher gave us 
something to be grateful for, 
for we saw 
with perfect pity,  

Judas

Surviving my mother by twelve years, my father  
became my perfect friend, 
having evolved from the anxious and overly-protective
father I’d known as a teenager. 

Woman Bathing | Authority

She performs the persistent ritual of cleansing, 
the splashing of water 
upon her scarlet apple flesh 
sullied with blood 

The Pulpit

It is a last bastion, 
The pulpit. Prominent 
Among muscular box shapes; 
Fenced off and jutting skyward 

Bathing a Child

            Elbow-deep in shallow water 
            with porcelain pressed against my breast 
I dragged the sudsy washcloth 
over your squirming body 

Straight Up

Shirley is the punch line who holds the joke 
while we wait like pieces on a game board 
in the line that wanders 
from the classrooms, through the halls, 

Ordinary Light

One hour of a particular day, 
like a sudden flu it descends upon you 
the first time. 
You could not have known. 

Plain and Simple

It could have been an impossible day. 

And then the wind 
helping the Gardener’s Eden keep its promise:
the outdoor ornaments

Naked

They’d come from practice at the gym, 
their hair steaming, 
and in the flirt and banter 
would reach inside my girlfriend’s car 

The Basic Tune of the Sparrow

Outside the glass that keeps us warm, 
the sparrows, 
most common of creatures, 
of whom the promise is made 

Love is a Delicate Chain

Here, the heavy brown ones from your father’s coat,
there the ladybugs from Jari’s first grade dress,
and from your birthday shirt, five urgent reds.
You, sorting the buttons while I sewed. 

In the Kitchen on a Saturday Morning

Three men 
in a circumference of scant sentences, 
slow dull sounds 
trade expertise, 

I Add Craig to My Prayers

All bones, nose, and trouble. 
It hasn’t been a year 
since he burned the tool shed down 
then crouched, crying, at the back 
of the garden while firemen watered 
the high whipping flames. 

Now and at the Hour of Our Death

Luis strained his ears, watching bare jacaranda branches twitch in silhouette against the bedroom wall. The bedroom window was sliding up. It was not a dream. A human shadow was nearly indivisible from the web…

Christian Spinning

My son who is blue-eyed and sensitive
thinks he’s alone in his room 
where his music bumps and heaves. 
I stand unseen at the door which is open

Contralto

In the interval after the mastectomy 
before her head was a slick white egg, 
she would color the gray roots of her dark 
blanket-soft hair with drugstore dye. 

Nothing We Needed to Know

And then, to show how it was done, 
Mrs. Jackson, the Home Ec. teacher, 
bent from the waist, the way you drink from a tap,
and demonstrated how to let the breasts 

Prayer for a Grandchild

Let bells come 
            from porches and throats 
of brown cows, 

Graduation

As morning breaks, our daughter, 
wearing her best blue dress, is too excited to eat. 
The wasted Cheerios bob like buoys in her bowl. 

The Local Police Report

At sixteen, I’m listening 
to the sounds of a fractured frame house: 

my older sister sobbing 
over hard news 
about a religious leader she has long admired,

Jesus Was There

on the wall behind the choir chairs, 
and the ladies 
brushing the warm chapel air 
with round cardboard fans were there, 

Always with Us

Years later, at a high school reunion, 
a girl gave a tribute to a classmate who had died. 
Not knowing another way to end 
her remarks, she did so 
“in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.”