Residue
Coffee, tea, urine, cigarettes and women: these things are petrified in the poet’s physical space. Jeff must take them in to find his own release. An every day’s the same day quality fills the pages of Residue. I can almost make out Jeff’s domestic space: refrigerator, cat, bed, chair, kettle, smoke stained walls. “The Will of The Day” is the most striking of this compilation of poems, which span over seven years of writing (many of the poems are dated). It appears early: “this morphine driven tension, lethargically,/ stretches on this/ terrain of a duller pain. Haven’t left/ apartment in days,/ a week, or more maybe. A month???/ attendants help getting out of bed./ leave the door open for them, or a stupid/ fucking thief I/ guess. 2 hours a day, more on Thursday./ 7 days a week./ a redundant truth that becomes really,/ fucking,/ boring”. It is difficult to write about the poetry of Jeff Carter because the chapbook was prefaced with a short letter to Broken Pencil which stated told that Carter took his young life in ’99 and that this is his one and only publication. My review is mediated by this chilling knowledge. (PVP)