Month: February 2016

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Laurie Byro’s “Luna”

The Sundress Blog

laurie-cloistersThe Lighthouse Keeper

The lighthouse keeper kills his mother.
It’s the same old story. I walk the neighborhood,
head bent low with frost. This could be a crate
filled with sea glass. Two poems rubbing against
one another on our porch. I’ve abandoned
one or both, sharpened my longest nail, filed it
to a point, shoveled snow and ash to snort you up
my nose. I’m tired of straddling a white
picket fence. We breakfast on Tab and Tylenol.
You fuck your mother over and over, rattle her
like teeth in your back pocket. I start drawing finches
with black crested tiaras. It’s all in the way
we walk, my friend. Seaweed tied to our wrists.
Naked-eyed I look out to sea. The lighthouse keeper
has stifled her heartbeat finally. The light shines
through blue Siamese eyes, remote enough
for one of us left and still afloat.

This selection comes…

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Losing Paradise, poem by Elizabeth Alford (MY MANE MEMORIES Poetry and Prose Series)

Silver Birch Press

Alford
Losing Paradise
by Elizabeth Alford

my hair was once long
and too thick — like
the swollen-bellied serpent
who may not feast again
for six months

too easily whipped
by the merciless wind
like a slave who needs
one moment
just to breathe

and seeking respite
from split ends
is as fruitless
as the endeavors of Eden

we were slaves then —
conditioned to obey
God, desire,
even the snake

yet we didn’t just eat
knowledge—
we devoured it

my hair was once long
and too thick — but now,
I think I’m losing it

my combs and brushes
are full of shame, and I can’t look
myself in the face

and every strand that drifts away
is another fall from grace

PHOTO: The poet’s high school yearbook photo from 2005.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: According to WebMD, “losing up to 100 hairs a day is normal.” Okay.

ABOUT THE…

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