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DOROTHEA LASKY
You were so blond
I knew it I knew it
But you were so blond and soft
I forgot about all of the things I had to do
I needed to do
Like Sor Juana and Hannah Weiner
Your skin was so soft and young
I forgot about having a baby
Or painting my nails with eggcream
I went down to your place and thought about you in your thoughts
Your thoughts are not plain
But will anyone ever know them
Could anyone be more plainspoken than you
For a million emotions
Oh your emotions are a million colors
And it will take you a hundred years to find me again
Fuck, you fuck
I tried to make it easier on you this time
Instead I waited and waited
And never gave up
You know, it’s true what they say
Poetry is a destructive force
Your back in the photo
That she took
That is the thing I will always remember
The Roman poets
The Roman poets brought me to this day
To see this thru
They marked me when I was little
They put the words in me
To be here
All the poems I've lost as papers I threw in the street
If I did it all to be here with you
If I took it all in
To sing it to you
Then yes love it was worth it
Just to live this life with you as my friend
And not a lover
But who cares anyway
The light was dim and drab
When I woke up and left it
In the light of the dawn
When I left this glorious animal body
To be the weather
That empties on the purple lawns
The end of things
Moving
Yes, I am moving but I am not
I will never see my body dead
In the way I have seen yours
The soul never sleeps
I told you
After you were gone
What was your name
I kept moving on
Until I did not need you anymore
I kept entering the same day
Until it was not the same day
Anymore, I left it
I thought of one universal thought
The idea that we all feel
The same way
But it was a new kind of water
I was swimming in
It was a new place
I was going to
Dorothea Lasky is the author of four books of poetry, most recently the forthcoming ROME (W.W. Norton/Liveright, 2014), as well as Thunderbird, Black Life, AWE, all out from Wave Books. She is the co-editor of Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry (McSweeney’s, 2013) and several chapbooks, including Poetry is Not a Project (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010). Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Poetry at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and lives in New York City.