Sarah Carey

Wyeth’s Women

seldom greet us face to face.
Take Helga, at the black canyon,
blonde braid falling behind.

He gives her back to us.

The museum docent approaches
the Lady of the House, who is opening
or closing the door,

we’ll never know which, or why,
when we try to enter the painting,
nor who Christina was

that bleak day in the open field
when Wyeth spotted her, crawling—
as she would, the guide tells our tour group,

how she hated her wheelchair, crawled
everywhere, desperate or determined

not to be seen as weak, or not to be seen
at all, and inspired by either
her courage or her freakishness

Wyeth had his wife model her torso.

I imagine the light as it would have been
from the farmhouse window to give us
that gold-flecked meadow, the artist

overlooking the Maine meadow,
the woman overlooked.


Another Day’s Inventory

When the rain slowed, I walked the dog
from whom I wrested one bottlecap, one shoe.

Clicked on a link to a network of bail funds,
found my country, my state. Hovered.

Faced quarantine roots in the mirror
bleeding into grey, then saw them fade

to ends, though split, still bright.
Remembered those halcyon days.

Stared at everything my walls encased.
Everything for so long, tirelessly, I’d polished.

Considered my money, my voice.
Spoke too soon, too often,

not at all, or far too late.


SARAH CAREY is a graduate of the Florida State University creative writing program. Her poems have appeared recently in Gulf Coast, Five Points, Sugar House Review, Florida Review, Redivider, River Heron Review, Split Rock Review, Atlanta Review and elsewhere. Her book reviews have appeared recently in Salamander, Tinderbox Poetry Journal and the Los Angeles Review. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, including Accommodations (2019), winner of the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award, and The Heart Contracts (2016, Finishing Line Press.) Her debut full-length collection, The Grief Committee Minutes, was published by Saint Julian Press in September 2024.


Read more by Sarah Carey

Author’s Website
Buy The Grief Committee Minutes
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