User R.S. Carlson Carlson Page 1 I wish I knew which half of your face was wry and which was straight; or why what you      extend - hand or promise - never seems to stand my slightest questions poised so gingerly I think of them as peaks of cream on pie, bland, curled to meet aesthetic demand (handsome, even, to the serious gourmand) high above a candied heart: a fly stopping for a taste could make one drop, so fragile the crest. Any suggestion, though, showing I recall what words ago lopped promises in two to prop new facades against old lies, and you spew back hurt at my lack of faith in you. R.S. Carlson is a professor of English at Azusa Pacific University. His poetry has appeared in Northwest Review, The Lucid Stone, and Viet Nam War Generation Journal.