Read My Lips

Read My Lips (David Robert Books)

Carter’s Debut Full-Length is Out Now!

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Charles K. Carter’s Read My Lips is a collection of poetry that follows the metamorphosis of romance; journeying from adolescent crushes to casual intimate encounters to marriage and heartbreak. Carter utilizes a variety of poetic forms including blank verse, free verse, ghazal, haiku, nirat, and prose poem as well as more unconventional forms.

View sample poems here

Playlist

Click here to check out a playlist curated by Carter himself to accompany Read My Lips.

Advanced Praise

“Charles K. Carter swings effortlessly from dizzy yearning to quirky playfulness to diamond-sharp psychological insight. Poem after poem glows with a sense that even the most transient of everyday objects such as fries, soda or lipstick can serve as vehicles into Carter’s imaginative lyricism. Read My Lips is a bold yet tender, direct yet shimmering collection of poems by a bright young American poet.” – Bren Booth-Jones, author of Open Letters to the Sky

“Waking up to the vulnerability of the body and the heart, the speaker of Read My Lips shares what it is to surrender. The urgency in these pages is honest and forever unapologetic.”  – Lauren Davis, author of Home Beneath the Church

“In Read My Lips, Charles K. Carter leads the reader back in time, into the pained and glorious years of adolescent heartbreak, and of coming to terms with one’s sexuality in a world that seems dedicated to forcing us to hide who we are from it. But Carter knows that we cannot, ever. The poems, here, are a testament to all of the ways in which one must raise one’s voice and shout to the world; we are here and we are enough! Underlying this work is a groundswell of deep, deep courage and the desire to tell others; in this, you are never alone.” – James Diaz, author of All Things Beautiful are Bent