October 2021
Bio Note: I live in New York’s North Country where not long ago, wind blew trees down flat and unroofed a school. I try to give equal attention to poetry, uke, and my mother, who lives with me. Some poems are in Atlanta Review, Paterson Literary Review, and Spillway.
First Nights
It wasn’t hard to thrill us at fourteen, fifteen, just open up the gym, lower the lights, get a bad band to play. These same floors we walked all day but now that someone said so, it was a dance. We could dance, we could be danced, we might choose or be chosen, shape our own hands and feet to shout what was too hard to say in the day. We were accepted for a dollar or for free into a nation made new after dark, where we were not yet tainted by the bad things that come once you finally get what you want.
Originally published in Mason Street
Early Odyssey
The shallow almost- breath is the one that eases babies out, unless it’s the downdeep breath then held, I never got it right, but that boat loaded with an entire life has to bash along a barrier reef and can only hope someone waits on shore to say, You’ve done well, you made it through the homecoming, so here’s a harbor where some town may keep you if you’re lucky, but don’t think you’re done, when in fact you’ve barely just begun.
Originally published in Triggerfish
©2021 Laurinda Lind
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