Two Poems by Carson Pytell

These two poems by Carson Pytell explore the complexities of the mind and heart by way of sensory experiences from which it is concluded that the heart and mind are not separate from, but supplemental to one another…

by: Carson Pytell

How You Can Tell

I love you the way the blind can scarcely tell the
differences between half dollars and double eagles.

It’s in your millimeters I find the matters which do,
and if I put on you any pressure, all you do is bend.

Strangers would see you with me and I’d hear them
expressing impressions of such joy and jealousy.

If you were a half dollar, even a good one; silver,
people would still see you as clad, not knowing.

But I would. Silver has a certain sound, some ring,
just not quite high pitched as your clarion cha-ching.

And, what’s best: like how most people don’t know
the blind can differentiate between bright and dark,

gold never loses its luster, silver does. Be buried,
and still I can dig you out of the dirts of memory,

wipe you off gently, hold you up to the sun,
and wait til you hit my eye and I see you again.

The Storm (or Why I Am a Painter Too)

It is a painting,
not by anyone famous,
but I nearly stopped writing
its poem because of what it said.

One flaky, strand board panel,
no background color at all,
just tailed dots facing one way
like sperm cells or meteors,
crowded, overlapping, fighting;
white, baby blue, grey, black.

It made me realize Mallarmé
wasn’t exactly right, that
arts are synergistic, and
that I’m a painter too.

Carson Pytell is a writer living outside Albany, NY whose work has appeared in numerous venues online and in print, including Artifact Nouveau, Perceptions Magazine, NoD Magazine, Rabid Oak and White Wall Review, among others. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Coastal Shelf, and his short collection, First-Year (Alien Buddha Press, 2020) and chapbook, Trail (Guerrilla Genesis Press, 2020) are now available. In December 2020 he is slated to participate in the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project.