Ryan in the diner, the end of the weekend.In a booth with a little jukebox on the table.Holding my hand against your knee, under the table.Up above the restaurant, on the dirt hill rising behind us, the little airport,little tower, almost-moon.Black jeans, & your knee,a little tremor. Force a swallow.The belt of Orion.Ryan saying goodbye.The ionized field around us is neither metaphor nor myth. Nor is its love.Deer whistle. Signals. The second coyote.The animal shedding its antlers in the arroyo across the fieldis a person. As are we.Now he’s put some information into your body.A little shaky.Walking out the glass door in the floodlights, you’re looking down at theground. Your shoes are dusty. You hold the signals into your chest.The animal in the dark scrub where the moonlight hasn’t reached yet, says,Handsome, soothe your sorrow. Now you’re having a better past
Plenty
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“Plenty” from LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN: by Tim Carrier.
Published by The Song Cave on October 28, 2025.
Copyright © 2025 by Tim Carrier.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Tim Carrier is from St. Louis. He earned an MA in English Literature at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College; and an MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), attending as a white / non-Native student. His poems have appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Foglifter, The Offing, Poetry Northwest, West Branch, and other journals. His chapbook Lookout Mountain was published by The Song Cave in 2025. He lives in northern New Mexico.
A new 24-page chapbook. Published as a numbered edition of 100 copies. Cover image by Duhon James.
"The poems in Tim Carrier’s debut chapbook Lookout Mountain offer not only a glimpse into the “aleph to ylem” of human existence, but into the radiance of the unseen. As the chapbook’s speaker lovingly revisits his past, he contemplates the fluidity of time and what it means to be alive: “And in one of the many time-worlds on the patio / in the cold & dark beneath the long black field of trees, & sky, / passing by, tall as trees, giant people made of light.” Moving from the physical minutiae of our lives to a sense of mystical vastness, Lookout Mountain is a skillfully rendered and deeply moving debut."
—W.J. Herbert, author of Dear Specimen
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