Eventually the future shows up everywhere:
the burly summers and unslept nights
in deep lines and dark splotches, thinning skin.
Here is the corner store grown to a condo,
the bike reduced to one spinning wheel,
the ghost of a dog that used to be, her trail,
no longer trodden, just a dip in the weeds.
The clear water we drank as thirsty children
still runs through our veins. Stars we saw then
we still see now, only fewer, dimmer, less often.
The old tunes play and continue to move us,
in spite of our learning, the wraith of romance,
lost innocence, literature, the death of the poets.
We continue to speak, if only in whispers,
to something inside us that longs to be named.
We name it the past and drag it behind us,
bag like a lung filled with shadow and song,
dreams of running, the keys to lost names.









Dorianne Laux´s fourth book of poems, Facts about the Moon (W.W. Norton), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the recipient of the Oregon Book Award. Short-listed for the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Facts about the Moon was also chosen by the Kansas City Star as one of the ten best books of poetry published in 2005. Laux is author of three collections of poetry from BOA Editions: Awake (1990), What We Carry (1994) and Smoke (2000). Red Dragonfly Press will release Superman: The Chapbook later this year. Co-author of The Poet's Companion, she´s the recipient of two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has appeared in the Best of the American Poetry Review, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and Ms. Magazine. In 1994 she moved to Eugene where she´s now a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. She lives with her husband, the poet Joseph Millar.
(Photo courtesy of Elaine Walker)
Enter your email:

Home      Register     About Us/Staff     Submit     Links     Contributors     Advertising     Archives     Blog    Donation    Contact Us    Web Design