Poetry by Laurinda Lind

The first bad thing

​
was the mirror
falling off the van
in Vermont & then
seconds later the
zipper splitting

on my wallet,
woeful signs,
silver of every
kind spraying
down the street

on the long leg
of a trip taken
the summer we
let the fifteen-
year-old leave

home to live with
his father, so we
worried about
whether the world
was saying, stop

right here before
you slide away
farther east where
you will only spend
yourselves in

holding close
around the shards.
Watching behind
for the boy who
won’t be there.

​

​
Carapace


Your tendency
to hurt what
can't be helped

                 the boy at the bar
                 with the softboned
                 hand who took
                 you home when
                 he read you wrong
                 & you wrenched away
                 & you pounded him down

the black snakes
that met our boat
that day at the island
& like G.I. Joe
you firestormed
the rocks with
an oar to beat
them flat dead

                 in your rage that
                 they'd gone so far
                 past what you could allow
                 alive in their own habitat

& within you
hidden &
sealed
something
sweet & sane
that wanted
the sun but

                 got stuck
                 down deep.

Your father
favored soldiers.

​


Forced Flower


Lily like a lightquake
shaking all the way

up its throaty petals
leans too late away

as from some kind
of father, infuriating,

like a flame to a fuse.
But for now a daughter's

face is still a flower
though it’s charred,

changed from what
it was while she grieves

a childhood but waits
for her roots to grow

strong enough to catch
again somewhere else

out in a more remote
and random soil.

​

Bio: Laurinda Lind lives in New York's North Country, near Canada. Some poetry acceptances/ publications have been in Barbaric Yawp, Blueline, Chautauqua, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Killjoy, Main Street Rag, Mudfish, Rat's Ass Review, and Triggerfish.

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