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GRATITUDE POEM FOR ONE OF US

                                                for Jane Meade, after Jean Valentine’s poem for Jane Kenyon

 

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the poet who died yesterday—

her work, I can see        the final fray

              in crescents and rasps—Jane. I can blubber 

 

for her—Jane—on the quad 

the campus fountain I discovered 

in the stone co-eds hiking up their clouds 

to play in the water—and how 

 

have I never been wet through with Jane 

the poet, when I know so many—

 

their blueprints under our poems

              the way this fountain atomizes anyone 

gone,    never gone,      evaporated

refreshed of the cosmos—

 

this fountain screams  J’s,

               Janes,

all of us,

               fishhooks in her spray.

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BLACK CLOTHES IN A PILE

 

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Past the green markets and electronic hope, 

the mannequin leaning into the moonlight, 

the whole cascade of her 

lit from above, the shoulders’ lightning strike

              against galaxies’ obsidian—

 

              the city’s promise of sleep—

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transplants surrender their drinks, 

lessons learned, an asphalt blur, 

eyeliner on a sham, the river-murk 

mocking          This is the show.

              The great ankle straps are wearing!

It’s time to go home!

 

You’ll soon be among the scavengers

of a different desert,

              but to close one eye

              on the train—hang on!

This maw blows the pothole-lid 

             high enough to hang your heels

             by the besotted moon.  

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NEIGHBOR HELD CAPTIVE SPIRALS,

             STABS BOYFRIEND FOUR TIMES IN A DEATH SPIRAL 

           

                                    

A famine begins in the road’s wound,

the blood snow abandons light’s unopened letter

before dawn wipes away her first wolf moon,

and trucks point like arrows drawn back.

 

The blizzard warns the forest 

free as the mulberry wine forth from his neck. 

Mind’s starvation gives puffed chest 

to tragedy’s couture—the mountain trailer 

                                                                                                                     stenciled porch signage about the heart

                                                                                                                                                         the little dog’s bowl, 

                                                                                                                                             deer-head cape in the yard. 

 

                                                                                                                                       I see her after the mess of it— 

                                                                                                                          in the fresh turf laying garden stones

                                                                                                                                 selling walking sticks, etchings—

                                                                                                                           sleeping pills now headed out to sea. 

 

                                                         Her boyfriend will smash her newest phone again

                                                                                   raze the rib’s air-cage,

                                                                                                 but she

                                                                                                 was my warrior.

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Laura Minor won the 2020 John Ciardi Poetry Prize. Her critically acclaimed debut book of poems, Flowers As Mind Control, is on University of Arkansas Press, 2022. She was also a finalist for the 2019 National Poetry Series and the winner of the 2019 ILA's Rita Dove Poetry Award.

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