even now, even still
I remain unsettled by the lengths we go to
disguise our own loneliness
my focus not on the arrows – red roses
wilting through my chest
but rather on who put them there
I am emptier than I was yesterday
& drinking less
all with the hope that you, too,
might starve, or at least
grow weary enough to notice the fault lines
hidden in your palms & smile
how, even now, they fracture
creating chasms deep enough
to swallow the strongest sips of my joy
This idea remains—
that I won’t materialize fast enough
that this lifetime is a brief dinner toast
dedicated to moving forward
to moving on
to moving
it has to be the next one
in which the sun warms
both sides of my face & the ground
the ground with all its cracks
supports my weight, even still
On Sunday
I found myself in a garden
me & nine other participants
turning topsoil & planting summer squash in
a therapy program that preached healing in nature
chores were chosen & I picked
watering because it was Sunday &
I like playing God —
my artificial rain sustaining life
the most intoxicating part
is controlling when & how the mist
intercepts the sun
I’d stand
making rainbows & with them a space
in which I can love, safely
I’d stand
& remember my first time in a gay bar &
remember the girl who dragged me there
& remember how loud we must’ve been
laughing to hear each other so clearly
this is how I choose to remember us —
Together & Alive
playing God, I watered flowers that reminded me first
of her funeral & then of her &
then of every queer body that felt
Homeless enough to leave it
it was Sunday & I picked watering
I made
rainbow after rainbow, hoping
that somehow
It might be enough
to keep us safe
Sam Silva says
These are truly inspired and excellent poems.
Robert Hogg says
Enjoyed these fine, mature poems. I was surprised to learn how young Lauren is–wise beyond her years! I also turned to listen to her on Youtube where she renders a strong self confidence in her oral performance. Here’s someone to keep an eye on.
William Perry says
I really like how these two poems play off of each other going from the macro to the micro on the time spectrum. At first I was pulled in by the first poem because I felt (narcissistically) it was written especially for me being that I have a red rose tattooed on my chest (My first wife’s name was Rosa) and now 30 years later, in my golden years, I have never come up with a better way of describing what that means to me than “wilting through my chest” and then, there is the moving, how I hopscotched from continent/culture/language to the next and there it was, also riveting and succint, in this same poem. Drinking less and feeling emptier easily sums up another long saga in my own timeline. I could go on narcissistically so, but the truth be told, on further readings it is the Sunday poem (and virtually completely outside my own past experiences) that overwhelms me existentially in the tauntness between the quiet pleasantries of isolated moments versus the tragicomic trajectories in life at large. Thank you for sharing these gems.