Dorianne Laux

“أياً يكن الحزن ووزنهفنحن مجبرون على حمله.ننهض ونحشد قوتنا الدافعة،تلك القوة البليدةالتي تقودنا عبر الحشود.ثم، وبحماسة شديدة، يدلّني فتىعلى وجهة السير. وتُبقي سيدة البابالزجاجي مفتوحاً وتنتظر بصبرلأعبر بجسدي الفارغ.يستمر هذا طوال اليوم، كل لطفيقود إلى الآخر، غريبٌيغني للاأحد بينما أعبرالممر، الأشجارتتيح ثمارها، طفلمعوّق يرفع عينيه اللوزيتين ويبتسم.على نحو ما يجدونني دائماً، ويبدوحتى إنهم ينتظرونني، مصمّمين علىإبقائي بعيدة من نفسي، من الشيء الذيينادينيكما ناداهم مرة حتماًتلك الغواية بأن أقفز عن الحافةوأسقط بلا وزن، بعيداًمن العالم.”

“Death comes to me again, a girlin a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling.It’s not so terrible she tells me,not like you think, all darknessand silence. There are windchimesand the smell of lemons, some daysit rains, but more often the air is dryand sweet. I sit beneath the staircasebuilt from hair and bone and listento the voices of the living. I like it,she says, shaking the dust from her hair,especially when they fight, and when they sing.”

“And oh, the oh my nape of the neck. The up-swept oh my nape of the neck. I could walk behind anyone and fall in love. Don’t stop. Don’t turn around.”

“You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake, ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs window. (from "Antilamentation")”

“If trees could speak they wouldn't”

“Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won’t. ”

“The slate black sky. The middle stepof the back porch. And long agomy mother's necklace, the beadsrolling north and south. Brokenthe rose stem, water into drops, glassknob on the bedroom door. Last summer'spot of parsley and mint, white rootsshooting like streamers through the cracks.Years ago the cat's tail, the bird bath,the car hood's rusted latch. Brokenlittle finger on my right hand at birth--I was pulled out too fast. What hasn''tbeen rent, divided, split? Broken the days into nights, the night skyinto stars, the stars into patternsI make up as I trace themwith a broken-off bladeof grass. Possible, unthinkable,the cricket's tiny back as I lieon the lawn in the dark, my harta blue cup fallen from someone's hands. ”

“Moon In the WindowI wish I could say I was the kind of childwho watched the moon from her window,would turn toward it and wonder.I never wondered. I read. Dark signsthat crawled toward the edge of the page.It took me years to grow a heartfrom paper and glue. All I had was a flashlight, bright as the moon,a white hole blazing beneath the sheets.”

“And I saw it didn’t matterwho had loved me or who I loved. I was alone.The black oily asphalt, the slick beautyof the Iranian attendant, the thickeningclouds—nothing was mine. And I understoodfinally, after a semester of philosophy,a thousand books of poetry, after deathand childbirth and the startled cries of menwho called out my name as they entered me,I finally believed I was alone, felt itin my actual, visceral heart, heard it echolike a thin bell.”

“You've walked those streets a thousand times and stillyou end up here. Regret none of it, not oneof the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,when the lights from the carnival rideswere the only stars you believed in, loving themfor their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a houseafter the TV set has been pitched out the upstairswindow. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptiedof expectation. Relax. Don't bother rememberingany of it. Let's stop here, under the lit signon the corner, and watch all the people walk by.”

“Maybe it's what we don't say/that saves us.”

“How not to imagine the tumorsripening beneath his skin, fleshI have kissed, stroked with my fingertips,pressed my belly and breasts against, some nightsso hard I thought I could enter him, openhis back at the spine like a door or a curtainand slip in like a small fish between his ribs,nudge the coral of his brains with my lips,brushing over the blue coil of his bowelswith the fluted silk of my tail.”

“That's how it is sometimes--God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you're just too tired to open it.”

“Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.”

“You are not your poetry. Your self-esteem shouldn't depend on whether you publish, or whether some editor or writer you admire thinks you're any good.”

“A poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way in the world.”

“Writing and reading are the only ways to find your voice. It won't magically burst forth in your poems the next time you sit down to write, or the next; but little by little, as you become aware of more choices and begin to make them -- consciously and unconsciously -- your style will develop.”

“We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it.”

“Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question.”

“Poetry is an intimate act. It's about bringing forth something that's inside you--whether it is a memory, a philosophical idea, a deep love for another person or for the world, or an apprehension of the spiritual. It's about making something, in language, which can be transmitted to others--not as information, or polemic, but as irreducible art.”

“Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's.”