Laurie Saurborn Young
Abortion
No linear blessing, only a pink
Paper umbrella, tanked lobsters
Waving wide claws and the friend
Who stops calling. A father who says
Green-black grackles in the yard
Tell him to walk back inside.
Stubbornly I focus, though some
Force persists in twisting
This lens. Insists on removing
My country. Now what flag, if any,
May I fly? As a child I signaled
Back to the lobsters; I kept the trinkets
Gracing adult drinks in my top
Dresser drawer. No matter how often
You rake, the oak leaves still float down.
No matter what you believe, the phone
Calls out again. After all this
What world is it where a bird
Tells a man to go and he does?
Talking Into My Hat
What could happen if clouds
undressed themselves at night
instead of knocking on my door,
begging unlace, untie?
My dog is blind and most
stars as well, so we can get
away with anything. With a rust
red hawk perching
on the wire—though might it fall
apart in my hands?
We will become exactly
what we’ll become, by which
I mean Mickela carries
persimmons to a distant morning
market. By which I mean I pull my hat
over my face to spend time among
any other thought. Rumor
indicates this train moves
exactly as it should, toward some
god of Carthage.
Or is it carnage? I forget.
Days of the week, their burnt
edges and smells—
I don’t forget them. Where is the little
man who unicycles my heart?
I have never seen a picture of my
self as a child but I am not
thinking of our souls at all.
Upon Learning of the Word Everlasting
Chinese elms, they laugh. Auburn
cat on the sofa, he smiles too.
What else to say of a broken
binding or a rabbit bounding
back at dawn? Planets converge
but oh yea they falleth apart in great
haste. Tilting windmills stand
giant in my kitchen. I stop kissing
strangers but breathing is escape
so I swim four times a week. Dogs
don’t feel this guilty watching prayer
wheels spin in Bhutan. It is inquired
how we spend our days & well we pass
them in their counting. Sister bright,
one like me wakes in a country
nearing this, among snowy
plovers faintly heard. A lover
asleep, a cat’s paw alighting
on her arm. A heart somewhere
coming closer than it should.
Setting a willow afire I recall who
we are, yard and air one listing
satellite. An old blonde dog
lifted up the steps. And yea verily
we cannot contain our celebration!
Laurie Saurborn Young is the author of Carnavoria and Patriot. Her second book of poems,Industry of Brief Distraction, is forthcoming from Saturnalia Books. A portfolio of her photography work is online at lauriesaurborn.carbonmade.com. She lives in Austin, Texas.
