Here I am reading and discussing my poetry on my college radio station, along with two of my fellow campus literary magazine members. Check it out! (I’m Lauren, by the way).

sharingpoetry:

In the winter, we will leave in a small pink railway carriage
With blue cushions. We will be comfortable.
A nest of mad kisses lies In each soft corner.
You will close your eyes, in order not to see, through the glass,
The evening shadows making faces.
Those snarling monstrosities, a populace

uber-alles:

by Jeffrey McDaniel

If it’s any consolation, when your wife took me
in her mouth, I closed my eyes and pretended

I was a piece of wedding cake. I was the instigator,
bringing her flowers so often her co-workers

nicknamed me carnation hands. At night, I’d look
at the stars and slither my petals through her hair.

It was like we were on Mars—me staring over
her skull at one moon, her gazing at another.

What I’m really trying to say is I tumbled into her
arms like a thousand reluctant dominoes.

I mean, isn’t it odd—how you can buy a lap dance,
phone sex, or blowjob in a snap, but can’t

pay a person a dollar to just sit next to you
on a park bench and simply hold your hand?

sharingpoetry:

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

i want all my love stories to begin in cars, with the music blaring.

our conversation, like smoke, is sucked through the open window,

so we travel miles in silence, squinting against the sun’s glaring

or speeding coolly under the unlocked shadow

of night. i pick lovers based on if they seem

like a good roadtrip companion, someone who, like me, feels at home

only when they aren’t, who shares my recurrent dreams

of wings and wheels, full gas tanks, the silvered gleam of chrome 

and long nights, someone who understands the siren call

of uninterrupted asphalt. i want a co-pilot, passenger seat,

shotgun romance. someone who, if he loves me at all,

will think of me as a familiar, tree-lined street.

but mostly, someone who will know me better than to grieve

when eventually i have to turn the key and leave.

nevver:

Ten Rules, Elmore Leonard

uber-alles:

The Tomb of the Unknown Friend by Richard Brautigan

I saw somebody on the street yesterday that I almost knew very well. It was a man with a kind and interesting face. Too bad we had never met before. We might have been very close friends if only we had met. When I saw him I almost felt like…

i’ve read that brautigan is one of murakami’s influences. i have to wonder how much he was influenced by this piece specifically, after reading On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning. and since his latest book 1Q84 is an extension of that short story…