Shelia Carter-Jones

Sheila L. Carter-Jones has been described by Herbert Woodward Martin as one who writes with immediacy of tone, voice and language. She is the author of Three Birds Deep, the 2012 winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Book Award and the chapbook Blackberry Cobbler Song. Her chapbook Crooked Star Dream Book was named Honorable Mention for the 2013 New York Center for Book Arts Chapbook Contest. She is a fellow of Cave Canem, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and a Walter Dakin Fellow of the 2015 Sewanee Writer’s Conference. Her poetry has been published in Crossing Limits, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Pennsylvania Review, Tri-State Anthology, Riverspeak, Flights: The Literary Journal of Sinclair College, Coal: A Poetry Anthology, City Paper, Cave Canem Anthology, Jewish Currents, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Labor, several volumes of Carlow University's Voices from the Attic anthologies and many other journals. Grace Cavalieri describes her poems as calling out against poetry of persuasion and contrivance. Sheila holds an MFA from Carlow University.

Memoir Abyss  

Nietzsche said something like, if you gaze into an abyss, the abyss 

also gazes into you.

The making of a black hole is a journey of matter squeezed into a space tiny 

as a navel. If I give you a scientific explanation of invisibility wrapped in 

ordinary light, you will see spirits caught and packed in the dark hole where

no light can get out and you 

will scrape your tongue along the seam of my vaginal pull. 

Your tongue. Your hungry tongue. Your tangled testicular tic of plunder 

insisting to steady me as I curse each cock-stiff-ejac 

of generous proportion. Only twice I buckled, wrenched, buried the seed 

planted by boss man. Never did the ebony statue open its eyes 

after the ship sailed on a bed of splinters.

Only twice I slit my clitoris to keep someone in my unabashed grace.      

He made me holy, stitched remnants of skin for my veil. 

I walked on water.

When he sniffed the smell of tender cunt rising from the dead,

I set a sideboard of tea and crumpets perfectly balanced on my breast  

and let my belly burst with a child slipped unborn. 

I ate placenta.

Only twice can a black woman live more than once in a lifetime.

She recycles double-jointed, moving fluids by mechanical action.

Never have I gazed at night stars wishing to pump the ocean full of light

and only twice

I sipped salty Atlantic waters to taste a half-eaten child floating starboard.

I saw a bioluminescent octopod enfold the half-body in her ring of light.

It floated up two arms full of the half-child dreaming. 

All dreams dead-dreams.

I spit chewed grubs on the floating grave of humans sardined,

drained solid with bone and I defy notions that the closest collapsing object 

is said to be seen only sixteen thousand light-years away. 

To See an Ocean

Other teachers think he is strange. It isn’t 

his almond colored skin. It is his eyes. They are 

blue as if the ocean is in him and the water 

has risen up past his lids into his pupils. His eyes 

are placid. The calmness makes teachers question. 

They want to know how this ocean happened. 

It is odd. Makes them uncomfortable. Didn’t 

make sense. He isn’t what they expect. Not mean. 

Not loud. Or, a smart aleck. It would be easier to

label him a troublemaker if he had regular eyes. 

Remove him from their discomfort. They would 

feel less threatened by the way his body in motion 

appears to be still. He is just a boy with a soft voice. 

When he answers questions or makes comments 

in class, his eyes are words and his voice is held 

back by a blush. When his mouth swells into a smile 

his cheeks puff as if to make his eyes two, distant, 

blue suns rising together and scattering light. Other 

teachers ask over and over if I can believe such 

a thing as a brown boy with blue eyes. I say, Yes, I

see him. I see how he dreams in his Air Jordan’s. How 

his voice carries him up before it can be cuffed 

behind his back. Before a bullet bursts his bubble 

and he is thrown overboard with the dead and

the dying. 

One Infinite Moment at the Majestic Truck Stop                      

Staring from behind the counter a teenage girl 

looks bewildered and innocent. She can’t take her eyes

off me.  

I know these moments of silence. I stare back and only 

because there is a line behind me I blurt, Coffee. She 

doesn’t ask, Small, medium or large? 

She doesn’t move. I don’t either. 

I’m remembering the way time seemed dream-like in     

seventh grade right before a rich girl kicked my shin with 

her cordovan loafer. Screamed Nigger.  

I want to scream, Don’t you see me standing right here? 

From behind her ketchup-stained white apron. From 

behind the white shirt with a fly-away collar and a white 

disposable paper hat bobby-pinned to her hair, she 

keeps looking. —Still doesn’t say a word.                                        

I say, Black 

and keep looking straight into glass-green eyes that 

show befuddlement and—does the wrinkling nose 

mean she’s questioning the everyday pinch of exhaust, 

funk of sweaty flesh, and caustic smell of fried onions?

Or, is the question about the air hanging between us?— 

irreconcilable as our bodies… Each on our own side of

the counter. 

Not budging. Like I stood before I went blind in a 

millisecond and my fists raged when the rich girl’s loafer struck 

mid-bone.  And don’t I remember a shiny copper Lincoln 

gleaming from inside the lip-like strap cut across the vamp? 

What is this teen-girl saying without sign—is she dumbstruck 

or is she dumb?                        

I say, The coffee…  Black.

She gets it.  

Sidewalk Suicide Attempt                                                                      

My neighbor sits on the sidewalk in a lawn chair 

he’s carried from his porch. I say, Hey Mike, how 

are you doing, but I’m thinking, This man is 

deranged. His body is naked from the waist up. His 

back, a pale tawny-pink. I have already seen him 

see me and look away. I have made myself visible 

despite how he wants to not see me. He doesn’t 

say he’s fine or even okay. He says he is trying to 

have a stroke. His face is red. His hair is chaotic as

if he has been running his fingers through it trying 

to organize his thoughts. It sticks out like fitted 

nails on the ball of a medieval club. He’s ready for 

puncture. His face is desperately tragic. I think he 

really wants to die. And, for a miniscule of time I 

want him to drop right then. It is a moment of 

accumulated stares tearing at my body. I clench my

teeth to hold impulse. The rush of rage for insulting 

compliments given generously. How he wishes he 

was in my eighth-grade class. As if I would let him 

lean into my breasts as natural as a child groping for 

its mother’s milk. Beyond what I think is right or

just, raw urge makes me feel like conquering. Surge 

of the primordial heightens at this moment of                                  

eye-to-eye. Hardest is to reign in euphoria. Dig 

toward the shared root. Find an enlightened bit of 

empathy in my gut instinct. I say to him with my 

hardest voice, You have to live like the rest of us.