Wendy Taylor Carlisle

Birthday

That day you tell yourself you can’t fall out or down,
favored as you’ve been by luck and the good opinion
of your secretary and your kids until you notice
your toes slue sidewise on your feet and nothing
is on your mind after that but the lean ankles
of girlhood and your knees which no longer genuflect
easily toward the mountains you have yet to climb.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and writes in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and tries to ignore her state’s politicians. 

Wendy Taylor Carlisle

The Writing Teacher Told Us
Never Write About The Moon

We ate up his wisdom,
living as we did
in that irony-free zone,
the south of the 1970’s
laughing our rivals to scorn
and waiting to be anthologized
without noticing
we were a decade behind
in slang and skirt lengths
or imagining for a second
the moon had other plans.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and writes on the backside of a hill in the Ozarks. 

Wendy Taylor Carlisle

Waste

It was lovely here
for a second, wasting time
with so little left.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle, author of two books and three chapbooks, lives and writes in the Arkansas, Ozarks.