Laine Derr

Laine Derr holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University and has published interviews with Carl Phillips, Ross Gay, Ted Kooser, and Robert Pinsky. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming from Chapter House, ZYZZYVA, Portland Review, Oxford Magazine, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.

Newly Bloomed

I was once, who I was,
screaming into the void,
a child once, who read
a hundred books below
a window, beneath a bush,
rests a hare not knowing
the land, it dies in darkness,
cicadas vibrating ((Om))—
May sky admiring a boy
ish body twisted like lazuli
buntings offering blue,
sloping songs calling us near. 

Decrying creation I tear
the throat, blood tasting of
the newly bloomed, Saguaros
white in their zeal, I wail,
How deep are the bones? 

Atomic Number 13

When she died, I drove
as far as empty, a valley
where tears sing of desert
blooms, hearts hanging
from a copper bell, now
quiet, waiting for its toll. 

Along a limestone canyon,
I walk the wash, questions
slow and brittle to the touch. 

I prefer living in the dark,
don’t you? The light, you say,
fairies fluttering, angelic circles
never-mindful of ends that meet,
a line not knowing left—lanky,
lovely, newly shorn, a boy
with wind-burned eyes, calling 

There’s a hole in my heart,
My lips never lie. 

There’s a hole in my heart,
So the blind will be. 

There’s a hole in my heart,
Bursting with pools of rain. 

For therapy, I started with my tongue,
agile, licking gums newly rotten, love
priced in pop cans crushed for change.

Aluminum lips fluent in recycled words,
silvery-white, reaching for its toll—