Category: Wendy Cartwright

Past the Silent Earthquakes Series inspired by Tori Amos: poem from Wendy Cartwright

Wendy Cartwright is a poet/author/reporter/columnist/weirdo out of Columbus, Indiana. She has had work published in Night Owl Narrative Issues 1 & 3 by Cajun Mutt Press, Ovation, an Anthology collected by Jimmy Broccoli, SPREAD, by Chris Dusterhoff, and Older Lifespan Vol. 11, by Pure Slush. She has been a Featured Writer on cajunmuttpress.wordpress.com and dearbooze.com . Wendy was also featured in the blog spotlight The Beat Poetry Must Go On! by Fevers of the Mind (feversofthemind.com). She just released her first volume of personal poetry, Everything I Said I Wasn’t. Wendy also writes human interest and news articles for the North Vernon Plain Dealer and has a bi-weekly column called Midwest Wonders in The Seymour Tribune. She has self-published two compilations of articles from the column. Wendy has also had articles published on businessinsider.com 

Precious Things

Memories are precious.
Driving, CD’s in the pioneer stereo
with removable faceplate I’d throw in the glove compartment to prevent theft of my music box.
Nostalgia.
The way I can’t listen to some songs,
and how I can’t sit still listening to others.
Visions of times past, just a kid in adult clothes,
trying to figure out where I fit.
Smoking bowls with the hippies
to family night at the club.
Connections made with the misunderstood, misfits
drunken wet kisses and meeting in the morning,
if we’re lucky.
I was always lucky.
Thank you.

The Beat Poetry Outlaws Must Go On! “An Outlaw and a Lady” by Wendy Cartwright

BIO:
Wendy Cartwright is a poet and author from Southern Indiana. She loves to tell the stories of her life through poetry. She has been published in issues of Night Owl Narrative by Cajun Mutt Press and has been selected as a featured writer on their website as well. She has a piece appearing in Ovation, an anthology of poems collected by Jimmy Broccoli, and has been selected as a featured writer on dearbooze.com. A volume of Wendy's poetry is set for release in late 2024, published by Storeylines Press.

An Outlaw and a Lady

Have you ever been to Woodlawn?
I spent the day walking the floors, the hills and valleys, listening for sounds underground
An outlaw by my side a real rural cowboy
Shivering in the multi-floor mausoleum, thermostat set to preserve
From Little Jimmy Dickens and his ornate plaque to Jerry Hubbard, aka Jerry Reed
I guess stage names don’t matter when you’re dead.
We hunted high and low, backtracking, retracing steps and found Webb Pierce
The damn tourist map was wrong
George Jones and Tammy Wynette buried in different areas of the same final resting place
Where’s Johnny?
The Man in Black is in Hendersonville alongside June, but the outlaw and I went in October
We expected a crowd but were the only ones there
The coins and picks and flowers of a sold-out crowd scattered in memoriam, remnants of a show
And the devil went down in Mount Juliet
Almost in the back of the cemetery to the right, I’m still listening for the sounds from underground
It’s just me and the outlaw
No fiddle, no squealing strings
After three different cemeteries in silence I realized
The sounds I’d been waiting to hear were those I’d been hearing all along
The soundtrack in the Ford between stops was the legacy left behind 
Shared between an outlaw and a lady.