Laura Read | Spokane Poet Laureate
Laura says, “Some of my favorite poets are Dorianne Laux, Sharon Olds, and Tony Hoagland.
Those are poets whose work I have loved and admired for years. But I am always finding new
poets to add to my list as well: last year, I read Revising the Storm by Geffrey Davis, which is an
excellent first collection, and I also really liked Dianne Seuss’s Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown
Open. Read says,
“Poetry is for everyone; it is not an elite art or a secret
code. It is the artful shaping of small moments in language,
moments that are particular to our own experiences, but
which also connect us deeply to each other.”
Ferguson’s
It’s a diner so we order burgers
and fries, we drink milkshakes
from the milkshake glasses
and they bring the metal
containers they made them in.
Everything tastes good here,
and I stare out at the January sky,
and think of all the grey days
we’ve eaten here with your mother
tucked into her coat, drinking
her coffee, waiting for you
to say something.
What will we do next—
go to Rite Aid or Walgreen’s?
Buy hard candies for her
to suck on while she looks out
the window and thinks about
how we went to Ferguson’s,
stared out across the street
to where her dad used to cut hair,
used to shave her boys’ heads as if
hair was a sign of weakness. Hair
is what girls have, this way a man
could lift them by the scruff,
like her dad gripped them,
teaching them about pain
and how to stand it, how to open
the door and walk
bare-headed into the cold.
52 ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE
When You Have Lived a Long Time in One Place
things start to vanish. Like the old Newberry’s
where I used to buy earrings that looked
like tacks, six pairs for a dollar, and then
go sit at the lunch counter with the old people
eating patty melts and drinking black coffee.
They stared in front of them like the women
on the bus with their plastic rain scarves
that they took from their purses when the bus
lurched towards their stop. They wore dresses
from the old country. Now I wonder
if they have nowhere to go. The building
stands empty like a mind that can’t remember
the words that stick things to their places,
pants, chair, toast. How can we remember
if they keep taking things down, like the house
where I lived when I was young and waiting
for love? I lay there in the yard in my bathing suit
pink as a poppy and I could feel his shadow
when it touched my body.
Now there is only a clean slate of grass
where that house stood, the same grass
that covers the spot in Lincoln Park
where there used to be a wading pool.
where I took Ben until the day I turned away
to get a toy for him and then he was face down
in the water, and I pulled him out
and we looked at each other and I could see
in his eyes that he couldn’t believe the water
was heartless, that it didn’t know who he was.