Laura A. Lord

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    • Wake Up a Woman
    • History of a Woman
    • The Telling
    • Perjury
    • Of Roots and Wreckage
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    • The T-Rex That Ruined My Day
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  • Sing

    June 25th, 2020

    I have been fired in an oven,
    crafted by negligent hands.
    I’ve been set on the edge of the mantle,
    poised as if my one dangling foot was ready to leap,
    pirouette across the floor and stretch –
    long limbed pale dance in the mirror.

    I am everything at once,
    all hands and lips and breath
    tracing the soft curves and flat planes.

    I am alone,
    back arched into the mattress,
    searching for a wind chime between my thighs,
    rubbing a thumb across the tangle of nerve wire
    until the edge of the vase fills, opens,
    sings.

    Shatters.
    Falls.
    Breaks.
    And sings, and sings, and sings.

    © Laura A. Lord, 2020

  • I Could

    June 25th, 2020

    I could take my inhibitions,
    push them under my tongue as hard, sweet candy.
    I could feel the lump of my morals crack and melt across my lips,
    glide down my throat as a prayer.
    I could close my eyes and let my lashes be a thousand little hands,
    soft against my cheek.
    I could see you as an intermittent shadow
    blinking through the luminescence behind my lids.
    I could pull the sheet from my bed and let it drape bare across me,
    a whisper of your weight.
    I could stencil in your hands on the canvas of my skin,
    at my throat, my thigh, the soft inside of my hip.
    I could pull myself from this little comfort zone I’ve made
    and fall sodden to my knees before you.
    I could.
    I could.

    © Laura A. Lord, 2020

  • Running Water

    June 25th, 2020

    Our daughter collects boxes.
    Big boxes.
    Small boxes.
    Boxes with purple lids that pop off
    or snap open on old brass hinges.
    Boxes with black velvet on the sides
    and pale blonde ribbons around the top.
    Boxes with soft cotton inside
    and holes pierced through the lids.
    Boxes in pieces,
    scattered like cardboard confetti
    and poking through the carpet into my toes.

    She isn’t here today,
    so I’m searching her room for a very specific box.
    I’m on my hands and knees
    pulling them out from the darkness under her bed.
    I’m laying them out on the floor
    where I can slip in a single toe,
    just to see if I fit.

    I need a box I can get inside of.
    Something as easy to slip into as the waves at the ocean.
    I have asked you to carry me,
    to pick me up, hold me close,
    but you might as well be trying to embrace running water.
    You’re holding me in a sieve and I’m clinging to the sides.
    I am too much for your hands.
    The carpet is soaked around your feet,
    it squishes between your toes
    and I see a look of disgust pass over your face.
    I could turn down the volume.
    I could twist the tap and pull myself back until I’m only a few little drops
    and then you could catch me in your hands like you used to do.
    You could hold me against your palms
    and I’d fit.

    © Laura A. Lord, 2020


    Thank you to MindLoveMisery for their prompt.

  • Clothesline

    June 24th, 2020

    I have an informal set of virtues.
    I turn them inside out and wash resilient grass stains from the knees.
    I wring them in my hands until they sing beautiful girl songs
    and I hang them wet and backwards from the line by my window.
    I attach them to the wind with a tack and I lay beneath them,
    let the water drip along the downfall of my left cheekbone,
    let the smell of pressed funeral flowers and beard oil peel back the smile from my lips.

    © Laura A. Lord, 2020


    Another thanks to MindLoveMisery for their prompt.

  • Burn Out

    June 24th, 2020

    My mind is fragile live wires
    exploding and raining sparks
    in pretty golden cartwheels
    that crash onto the floor
    and scatter as sugar
    underneath the bed.

    And here
    I am…
    just pulling the covers up to my chin
    and letting the lights burn out.

    © Laura A. Lord, 2020


    Thank you to MindLoveMisery for their prompt.

  • Ants

    June 3rd, 2020

    I must have been a sight to see,
    there in the bathroom shower
    water sifting around my toes
    and swirling in a flaccid current around a clogged drain,
    face peeling like the bark of an old Birch tree
    to reveal the Queen of Hearts
    in all her vulgar, red-faced fury.
    I must have been amazing for just
    a few
    moments.

    I gathered power behind my teeth
    and dispersed an entire generation with my breath.
    I watched,
    with indifferent eye
    as confusion set in,
    tiny legs scattered to avoid
    the corpses floating down the drain.
    I must have been in my element.
    Fight or
    fight or
    fight.

    But my anger is a smoke screen,
    an alluring deception.
    It is layer after layer of oil paint,
    that’s never been given the time to cure.
    It is loose and wet and it breaks and runs
    and runs
    and runs.

    It scatters as ants on my bathroom windowsill.
    It sends me flying down the stairs,
    knocking my hip on the wall
    as I harness my damp skin in whatever the closest piece of cloth is,
    because I have to leave right now;
    right this minute.
    Now.

    And I will spend an hour walking my dog through the neighborhood.
    I will seek movement as a balm for the severity of my anger.
    I will make predications and sort the meaning of my choices
    like I’m scrying our future out of cracks in the concrete.
    I will throw off sleep and sanity like an abandoned shoe.
    I will hear my breath as a labored love song
    and I will hesitate in the comfort that is my mourning melody.
    I will make earnest excuses for tiring behavior
    and I will push ahead, through the foliage,
    around the next corner,
    a block to the right,
    until I can’t see the lights in my upstairs window,
    until there is a sunrise in my soul and I am so awake I cannot see the ghost of us
    in tiny skittering legs on my bathroom windowsill.

     

    © Laura A. Lord, 2020


    As always, thank you to MindLoveMisery. I used a number of your posts this time. You have been choosing some wonderful words for me. You may see the posts here, here, and here.

  • I Won’t Name This Thing

    May 25th, 2020

    When I was 17 I brought home a puppy.
    It was black and brown, with a small purple tongue.
    It was squirming around and I held it,
    with all that I had.
    I held it with two hands and called it mine.

    But you told me not to name it.
    If you name it, you’ll keep it.
    If you name it, you’ll make a bed for it.
    If you name it, it’s home,
    and it’s awfully hard to get rid of something with a name.

    You drove me to an empty parking lot.
    There was a crate under a streetlamp, a small bowl of water inside.
    A safe haven for the unwanted.
    But I cried when I put him in.
    I cried when we drove off.
    I cried, because I wanted that damn puppy
    and his name was Rocky.

    I learned that lesson well.
    I held on to it,
    tucked it back behind my rib cage,
    right near my spine
    so when I think about it hard enough
    I get a single sharp pain right down my sciatic nerve.
    A literal pain in the ass,
    that’s memory .

    That’s why I won’t name this thing.
    This you.
    This me.
    When my therapist says, “Call it what it is.”
    I tell her it’s a new found species.
    Some undefined thing,
    never before seen in the wild,
    and I’ve got it almost tamed, I laugh.
    Right here at my dining room table,
    in my shower,
    on top of me in bed.

    I’m not naming this thing.
    I don’t want hard to hold on to.
    I don’t want another wedge jammed against my spine.
    I have no room inside for this thing we’ve created.
    These broken words.
    This broken bed.
    This you.
    This me.
    I’m not making it a home here.
    I won’t name this thing.

    ©️ Laura A. Lord, 2020

     

  • Unwilling

    May 23rd, 2020

    You scaled me like a rigid, unyielding mountaintop
    and you slipped through honey nectar words
    that pooled in my head.
    I wiggle a finger in my ear and make the world shake.
    Your words stick to the grief track circling my ear drum –
    hungry tentacle lullaby.

    I lay back and stare at the ceiling.
    There,
    in the far corner –
    a stain the color of sweet tea
    has spread into the shape of Australia,
    an eerie match for your birth mark.
    So I force focus over your shoulder
    and see the edge of your ribcage in our ceiling.
    I’m looking for the you I used to know –
    feather flight traces blow in the barest gap
    between our flesh.

    And I only feel you now
    when you aren’t touching me.

    © Laura A. Lord, 2020


    Thank you to MindLoveMisery for the prompt.

  • Stranger

    May 22nd, 2020

    I am a rose-tinted vase,
    glass hips,
    swiveling on the edge of the counter –
    dangerously close to teetering over.
    My lips are heavy headed blooms,
    wilting and breaking at the stems.
    I am a cascade of confusion –
    baby’s breath fluttering like dust
    in the ceiling fan’s breeze.

    I’m pretty sure you forgot to water me.

    You –
    you’ve got one heavy finger
    wrapped around the neck,
    a safety harness to keep me
    from falling and splintering across the tile.

    I can hear your pulse through your finger.
    I follow it –
    a yellow brick road
    and I’m seeking the wizard here.
    I close my eyes and pull back the curtain,
    move my hips,
    glass vase,
    tilt a whirl on the countertop.
    I just want a peek at the new you.

    I’m pretty sure your face is unrecognizable now.

    You’re all severe edges
    and sharp cheekbones.
    You are stark and solid.
    You are steel bars and strangle smoke.
    You
    are stranger.

    © Laura A. Lord, 2020


    Thank you to MindLoveMisery for their prompt.


     

  • Good Vibes

    April 21st, 2020

    I bought a vibrator that comes with an app.
    I can literally connect my pussy to the internet.
    Hands free,
    wireless compatibility…
    It’s the self-driving car of my era.
    And I’m stuck home alone,
    self-quarantined,
    fucking myself
    with someone’s vibe recording from San Jose.
    I picture them –
    heavy-handed beige fingers
    tracing their own sob story
    across the screen of their phone.
    They write:
    “Hi,”
    “I love you,”
    and
    “Ready. Next.”

    I slide their orgasm on like I’m trying on a stranger’s coat.
    It fits, but not quite right.
    They move with a certainty that speaks to their lips
    and like another fucking language
    I’m so busy translating
    I exclude a few unknown words,
    hit the buttons on the app,
    and swipe my own way to a chemical uprising.

     

    @ Laura A. Lord, 2020


    Seriously though, stay home. Find yourself some happy chemicals in your brain. Go buy a new vibe. I definitely recommend Monster Pub. Just saying. I’m not being paid anything to recommend them. I just like my new vibe. 😀

    Oh, and check out the promptsat MindLoveMisery. Thanks as always.

  • Karen

    April 16th, 2020

    I want to call customer service.
    I want to bring a very specific problem
    to a knowledgeable bank of experienced people.
    I want quality advice and then
    I want to speak to every manager until I’ve reached the top of the whole fucking chain.
    I want to be a Karen.
    I want to stomp my foot and demand the answers,
    because I am at my last possible straw.
    I am tired.
    I am more than tired.
    I am a leaf at the end of autumn.
    I’m at the top of the tree and the wind is howling
    and I’m clinging with paper-thin threads of life
    to the tip of a branch
    and the whole fucking world is staring and waiting for me
    to break and blow off into the distance
    only to quickly be forgotten.

    I want someone else to put out the fires.
    I want someone else to find the answers.

    When I called you and said my tire was flat,
    our daughter staring holes in the side of my face,
    hands tip-tap dancing along her thigh,
    I eased the wrinkles of worry from her brow and said,
    I’m calling Daddy.
    And you said,
    and I quote,
    “What do you want me to do about it?”

    I felt the headache’s immediate fingers
    prod at my temples
    and stretch its nails across my stoic mouth muscles.
    My teeth ground powder thin patience
    and turned my salvia to clay –
    thick, heavy, and red in my mouth.

    I wanted Triple A.
    I wanted a manager to speak to.
    I need to report your employee.
    He sucks at his job.
    I want a discount.
    I want a return.
    I want someone else to have the answers
    and I want,
    I want,
    I want
    to cling to this goddamn tree for awhile
    without everyone staring at me
    and wondering why I can’t even tell
    the whole thing is on fucking fire anyway.

    © Laura A. Lord, 2020

     

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