LAURINDA LIND

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Image by Ian Keefe

A Lake, Black

as a glacierhole ground down
hard going to seed under ice eating

through rock shaving to sand its
aftertrain of grains: also staining

everything in its strong sediment:
if a bellyful of acid settled at its

lowest level before the rushing of
a great river wouldn’t you want

to swim it backward to see what
could be saved at the source: we

are the minutes of its storms: they
learn to go slow like centuries

Sub Voce

My former husband forgot to keep
the kids, his weekend by agreement,
so you and I took them to New York
with us, there was no time to pack but
we bought them clothes from a parking-
lot rack in Brooklyn and then, though
we were there for you to defend your
dissertation, we museumed with them
and counted whalebones, we ducked
rubber squid and were about to resurface
to the street to find our car smashed
to smithereens– but in the rock hall,
the rock church, the kids with their
postwar ears heard adamantine, calcite,
topaz singing one to the other, and
walked around with wide eyes, wondering
why we couldn’t hear them too– then
they both warned how the music went
mute in the inner room by the uranium
altar. We all worried why the thundergut
said nothing, and while, outside, our car
blew about the street like tinsel, a god
that could unpeople the planet stared
out at us in hieroglyphic silence.

When the Tribal Drummers Join the Symphony

The suits start decorously
climb pause swirl
all stylized passion then NOW NOW NOW
human hearts with their clamor eat
up the cold LOSS LOVE LOSS

a vat of voices scares
the shadows alive
the suits stay stunned
and cindered to their seats