greatpoetry | Entries tagged with lola haskins

elenbarathi.livejournal.com

Patsy Sees a Ghost

I'm crossing the river where it narrows,
carefully, it being Sunday
and I'm past the root end of the log
when I look up,
and there's a haunt sitting
on the blossom end.
I can see trumpet vine and blackberries
through her white dress.
Gnats hang in the air.
The river runs, red-brown and deep.
The haunt sings
and it's my music, the blood song
of my heart and bones
and my skull dancing in the road.
And Chloe, she knows my name.
She says Oh Patsy, take care,
or you will surely fall
and the thick river
will pull you too to shroudy weeds
and you'll be gone,
gone as the moment you looked up
and saw the trumpet vine and
berrries, hot and ready
through my white dress,
gone as all the years since I died,
and waited here for you.

~by Lola Haskins

teithiwr.livejournal.com

I know posts like this have probably been made many many times, but I'd really appreciate some poems on the themes of love and losing it, grief, guilt, betrayal of friendship and making hard but inevitable decisions. (Elizabeth Bishop's One Art, posted here just a while ago, is the sort of thing.) Acceptance. Learning to live with loss.

Sorry for the ramble.

Here's a poem:

Love

by Lola Haskins

She tries it on, like a dress.
She decides it doesn't fit,
and starts to take it off.
Her skin comes, too.

moireach.livejournal.com

Sleep Positions
Lola Haskins

This is how we sleep:
On our backs, with pillows covering our chests, heavy as dirt
On our sides, like wistful spoons
Clenched, knees in-tucked, arms folded
Wide, like sprawling-rooted lotuses

In Iowa on top of pictures of Hawaii, huge white flowers on blue
In New York on black satin
In China on straw.

This is how our dreams arrive:
As hot yellow taxicabs;
As sudden blazing steam, we who have been pots on a stove,
looking only at our own lids;
As uninvited insects, all at once on our tongues.

O hairdresser, auditor, hardknuckled puller of crabtraps, you who
think poetry was school, you who believe you never had
a flying thought,
lie down.

Current Mood: LOVE

of-ghosts.livejournal.com

[Unknown site tag]

Chicago, Illinois

Rows of rectangles rise, set into brick.
And in every rectangle, there is a lamp.
Why should there be a lamp in every window?
Because in all this wide city, there is not
enough light. Because the young in the world
are crazy for light and the old are afraid
it will leave them. Because whoever you are,
if you come home late but it looks like noon,
you won't tense at the click as you walk in
which is probably after all only the heat
coming on, or the floorboards settling.
So when you fling your coat to its peg in
the hall, and kick off your heels, and unzip
your black velvet at that odd vee'd angle as if
someone were twisting your arm from behind,
then reach inside the closet for a hanger,
just to the dark left where the dresses live,
what happens next is a complete surprise

Current Mood: bored bored bored
Current Music: sufjan stevens

jadedpoet84.livejournal.com

Decor

John and Eve live in New York white.
Even their Christmas trees
wear only white lights, white angels.
Their doorsills hoard no dust.
Their dressertops are bare.
On one white wall, off center,
hangs a face. Round holes
for eyes. Where the mouth
would be, perfectly smooth.

Deb wraps all in blue. Blue willow
for breakables. Blue quilt, blue
rug, blue lights. Otherwise, white
only, for how it looks against blue.
She longs for a man but says men
bode bad wind, like a bruised sky.
Deb is obsessed with sky.

I look for earth. Green and brown,
ecru for the clay women licked
on the beaches of South Carolina
because they lacked something
they could not name. Day after
day they returned. palms flat,
wide skirts spread, and one by
one, silent, ashamed of such need,
they'd rise and go home.

--Lola Haskins

Current Mood: bored
Current Music: Alicia keys - karma

eugenecraft.livejournal.com

Why Performers Wear Black

Because there is no black flower.
Because they are brides.
So that their hands can reach out of earth.
Because this is not practice.

Because they have agreed
not to talk with their mouths.
Because they know that sound
carries best at night,

the dip of feeding oars,
the loons' tremolo cry,
a whisper muffled in a woman's hair
on the far, dark, shore.

-Lola Haskins

timiathan.livejournal.com

Lola Haskins

Dearborn North Apartments, Chicago, Illinois

Rows of rectangles rise, set into brick.
And in every rectangle, there is a lamp.
Why should there be a lamp in every window?
Because in all this wide city, there is not
enough light. Because the young in the world
are crazy for light and the old are afraid
it will leave them. Because whoever you are,
if you come home late but it looks like noon,
you won't tense at the click as you walk in
which is probably after all only the heat
coming on, or the floorboards settling.
So when you fling your coat to its peg in
the hall, and kick off your heels, and unzip
your black velvet at that odd vee'd angle as if
someone were twisting your arm from behind,
then reach inside the closet for a hanger,
just to the dark left where the dresses live,
what happens next is a complete surprise.

moireach.livejournal.com

Uchepas, Lola Haskins

Tamales plain-steamed then whitened
like a wedding dress with cream
and queso. A beautiful simple food.
And not enough. We want more.

We are cravers of storms and choques
on the highway. We never mind
waiting in the long stopped lines
if at the end there can be some blood.

Forget our lovers. We want
a stranger, shiver deepest at the
hairs on the backs of someone’s
hands, who has not touched us yet.

[See also her poem Grass.]

Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: scissor sisters, return to oz

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I Eat Poetry

Entries tagged with lola haskins

Patsy Sees A Ghost, by Lola Haskins

Request, and some Lola Haskins

Sleep Positions, Lola Haskins

Lola Haskins

Every day I love her poetry more...

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Uchepas, Lola Haskins

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