Carleen Tibbetts

Carleen Tibbetts is the author of dossier for the postverbal (Carrion Bloom Books, 2023) and DATACLYSM.jpg (White Stag, 2019). Her work has appeared in many print and online journals including jubilat, Sink, Dreginald, Mercury Firs, the tiny, Notre Dame Review, The Pinch, The Laurel Review, Datableed, and other publications. 

regret dressed in black lace misled by bad data

stories do not float/oppressed by an image of happiness/how vulgar the vulnerability/of anything
that serves as a window to the body/of the world/the sun is too coherent/every minute proves that
reality is conditional/a flash of emergence/no doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before

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in search of a grand seduction

night on your face/those darkroom flickers/a landscape has endless false endings/the play of the
imagination is violent/language is as blind as sleep/enter the folds of a human adventure/cold
spreads like sawdust over an abandoned playground/there are not enough faces in the mirror for
your selves

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a dream is a poor location for memories of things one hasn’t noticed

the lewd sea calls her random stars/all wonders are small/hot cells of benevolence/we don’t need
new motives for loving/the lights behave negatively/creation myths are always tales of
cruelty/the poised and luminous disparity between fact and fiction/a wind that can justify the
rattling of the door/a liar of the moment/twisted inward away from danger

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all wonders are small

daily life draws us into an endless dialogue/this time of ambiguous blue/time has no respect for
things done without it/a twinkling beast/a fine recording with no hisses/a room which is a
robe/there are many predatory weathers/a non-sequitur is a song of experience

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every song was like a nail in the jaw

blatant blackness/puts a period to your desires/clumsy freedom/clouded jazz/the subtlety of the
ordinary/engage in a flurry of wordplay/the interstices of competence/the gentle violence of
trees/the brave gladdening sun revoking its harm/shines amidst the stars of decision

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