Sample Poems by Laurie Blauner
The Sudden Appearance of Blue
The house is too late. Everything that’s worth
saying has already been said. Bye to white
and green and yellow. I’m sure of the evenings,
staining my exhausted wine blue, my limbs scatter,
tossing haphazardly, birds perpetually looking
for springtime. It’s under there, somewhere. Follow
the sex. Sometimes there’s someone else.
It’s exciting but a dead end. And that’s the point:
the rooms don’t know what to do. Turning
themselves inside out like empty sleeves
doesn’t help. There’s the lamp that can’t wait
forever, a desk that knows that none of it
matters. My mirror betrays the dumb animal
faces. What can I do? Watch the paint
peel? Darkness shapes what’s missing.
I’m alone everywhere. Doors open to
the smell of fields whose life has been cut
short, the forgotten trees. My steely kitchen.
I miss touch the most, my velvet living room.
Floors hum with life, with a light that can’t
stay still. Take it back I want to say. It’s
not enough that the walls consider their options
or windows ponder the fate of the afternoon.
The house grows bald and blue, turning
another cheek. It’s too little, too late.
Furniture waits, staring at me. The writing
on the wall doesn’t mean anything. If only
corners could last forever or my lawn
could speak to birds. I’ll go
wherever I’ll be taken in.
Growing Closer to My Symptoms
I want fresh brain and bone.
I want a discourse between the nerves
like champagne’s furious, blonde bubbles.
If I had wanted persuasion I would have gone
to the red sky, the trembling wilderness, clouds fastened
to their itty bitty stars. Urge me on. Convince the day
that night didn’t mean it, that it only takes
a little patience. Continue; we must. I turn from
a misshapen squirrel by the side of the road. My face
fighting tooth and nail to give up the window. Anyway,
what can’t be given should be given up like mistakes,
cold, white linen,
a stranger's eyes. I hold onto the season, riding it
like a professional, but the voices tell me I’m wrong.
I say you can’t tell yourself anything anymore.
I do what I’m told; that is, I keep on arriving.
The sun doesn’t mean anything and the moon disapproves
of everything I do. I get directions and go to the incorrect
moment, I end up going further into an uplifting hour.
Presumption surrounds me, takes my hand, leads me
to a narrow passage I get too close to. I’m sorry, I say,
but I’m not sure what for: ruins; nastiness; someone
else’s husband. Perhaps it’s just me growing vertical.
Geographical Confession
Hills begin with the random intimacy
of light. Our mouths slip, then linger
reciprocally. Our children, in the next room,
unleash their toys, the snap and pop
of red circles, blue squares, an alluvial green
filling in noise. Just before sleep I can hear
the detective retracing my steps, his breath in the begonias
fluttering. Wander I've ordered everyone else and then
take my own advice. My face adjusts itself,
then rests. If I stay still the world changes around me,
so I'll take whatever I can afford.
My valleys are flushed with gestures for escape.
I hold a lover's hand to decide what to do and
the detective wakes up, writes something down. I
seamlessly move between people and their houses,
equipped with early earthquake theories.
Weather ignores windows and
my husband waits for my kiss. I blink
in the dismantling landscape, watching clouds linger
and birds climb them like rope.
Science or Something Like It
Each incident undoes the last one. Up here,
nothing. Below, the crowds swarm, thicken,
wanting to be elsewhere. I rely on glass to magnify
what it has begun, a constellation’s kiss. There is
only so much you will tell me at night,
in the honest dark. The television news splashed
onto a flung arm here, an abandoned leg there,
lips that might as well be alone. During the day
there are no secrets. The light whispers everything.
If I leave someone will take my place. It’s all
in the details anyway. In this kind of science
we have learned how to disassemble one another.
The results are in. I’m open-mouthed. One answer
boomerangs in my body. I want to hold your hand
in the dark, brag. My cells confetti. They
are given direction. We can’t stop it, go home,
forget. There are the untold ramifications,
the discarded clothes, everything effervescent and random.
Odd Forecasts
From my window I see only softening.
Clouds waffle, reaching for the right words
to describe birds with different wings.
The pond mimics. Sky watches as trees peel down
to nothing. That’s what I’m after, no things.
The house I grew up in liked jazz,
allowed light to dance staccato on walls,
the riffs of air. The family inside
huddled in at the strangest weather,
rain repeating itself, wind too tight around a neck,
snow spitting at a face. I just don’t know
how to begin. The future is an invention.
My friend laughs, throws her head back
a little too far. I want to reach beyond her skin,
find the bone. Discover how it all starts.
Small lessons nibble at me, the moon clenches
the trunk of a tree. I see a bonnet on the scarecrow.
It’s quiet tonight, a star steps unsteadily into the night,
a drunk relative I just argued with who has
walked outside to get some air.
Of All the Little Intrigues
yours was ecclesiastical. Pears,
their skin swerving to avoid air, their tiny
flawed seeds waiting to start again.
Nothing but mistakes. If you’re leaving,
leave. We have what’s left of you and it’s weightless.
A person could die of loneliness, talking to themselves.
Somewhere, there’s an answer for
all the betrayals, only it sounds like
laughing or singing. I’m left, crying.
You tell me stories about the contours of hills,
how fish are filled with water, the way stones
speak. I’m worn out. The world changes with or
without you. I’ve peeled you to nothing.
I circle the barely seen—which must be your soul
because it leaps, goes straight for my heart.
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