five poems
by Carla Sarett
Immaculate deception: cento
I slept with a guy (more than a few times)
who transitioned to a woman.
He was prettier as a man.
Actually, exquisite as a man.
Ordinary as a woman.
It was like being with Apollo—
Light.
Chiseled shining.
Oh my, I used to own
so many lipsticks. Burgundy or Carmen.
I had to leave a butterfly
museum because they…flew.
If I were writing a comic novel,
my heroine would be a beekeeper.
—- all lines are quotes from texts
red noir
she steals a drugstore red lipstick
called Fire and Ice or Cherries in the Snow
runs down Broadway in red stilettos
dips into a sexy red Corvette
speeds past red stop signs,
red sirens & fire engines
her number’s red on a bar napkin
her red stains a white collar then
a knife tipped with red
red on a hotel door
red in a falling elevator
there are no red tears
marvelous red drones fly over her
don't ask about red, where it goes
Post Noir
Verna is stealing husbands in the lobby of the Roxie. A young fireman sobs into a Sprite, an aging human-rights lawyer faints on his way to his seat. Ten cops, of assorted ages and weights, wait for a whiff of Verna’s Red Temptation. Wives die in cars and pink bathtubs. Husbands jump off the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge and other urban heights. It is always raining, it is always night, there are no moons. Verna’s one and only love is a dissipated pianist who falls in love with Verna’s stern older sister and her curiously alluring spectacles— oh, those cat-eyes! Verna works in many Midwestern diners, she wears a crisp white uniform and brittle white shoes. Watch out, she tells me, men will do anything.
Empanadas
I’ m in the mood for flaky meat pies which I can’t get in San Francisco. I can get empanadas, which, when I think on it, are tastier than those British meat pies that evoke Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street— wasn’t it men in those pies? (Seriously, anything could be inside that crust.) My mother’s singing The Worst Pies in London. She’s turned psychic, one of her death benefits, and she still can’t carry a tune. There happen to be pretty good (not fabulous, but OK) empanadas down Fourth Street in a circle of food trucks where everyone’s ecstatic just to be eating food instead of sipping lattes with oat or almond or whatever passes for milk after soy was outlawed. The happy people must text one another as they eat; they all laugh at 12:01. Everyone’s dressed in gray and black hoodies; color’s gone the way of soy. Chicken empanadas, my mother says, and I nod. We can’t mention meat pies while everyone’s laughing.
imaginary movie
for Dan Essman
My poem isn't a movie, or is it.
Scene One, Interior in bedroom
No, Exterior, ledge a woman
croons to a mad grey cat below.
Fade to motel room on Sunset,
radio plays Peggy Lee, Fever.
Man's POV: words Bleating Cries.
Flashback, Interior Bedroom, red
bedspread, man dressing, running
out, naked woman moans. Flash-
back, man holds mad grey cat. Interior,
he's grown old wizened in hotel,
he is chain-smoking (since it's
a movie) weeping (since it's a poem.)
*originally published in Otoliths, then in Carla’s noir chapbook, Woman on the Run, 2023, Alien Buddha.
Photo of Carla Sarett
BIO: Carla Sarett’s latest poetry chapbook, Any Excuse for a Party, is out from Bainbridge Island Press. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of Net, Best Microfictions and Best American Essay. She serves as Contributing Editor for New Verse Review and earned her PhD from University of Pennsylvania.