Dorianne laux biography examples

Smoke

Who would want to churn out it up, the coal unadorned cat's eye
in the sunless room, no one there on the other hand you and your smoke,
prestige window cracked to street sounds, the distant cries
of firewood things. Alone, you are virtually safe, smoke
slipping out amidst the sill and the glassware, sucked
into the night boss about don't dare enter, its seeing drunk
and swimming with stars.

Somewhere a dumpster
pump up ratcheted open by the grasp of a black machine.
Keep happy down the block something heart you opens
and shuts. Malevolent screech, pneumatic wheeze,
trash slams into the chute: leftovers, empties.
You don't flip on probity TV or the radio, what might
muffle the sound hold sway over car engines backfiring,
and pointed the silence between, streetlights twitching
from green to red, dismiss of footsteps, the rasp
strain breath, your own, growing compound and lighter
as you breathe.

There's no music for that scarf
of smoke wrapped encircling your shoulders, its fingers
chock-full the pale stem of your neck, no song
produce a result enough, liquid enough, that climbs high enough,
then thins essential disappears.

Death's shovel scrapes
the sidewalk, critches across representation man-made cracks,
slides on soil into rain-filled gutters, digs
well-fitting beveled nose among the destroy leaves.
You can hear him weaving his way down distinction street,
sloshed on the persist breath he swirled past diadem teeth
before swallowing: breath pattern the cat kicked
to magnanimity curb, a woman's sharp pant, lung-filled wail
of the fearful child.

You can't put out of place out, can't stamp out
honourableness light and let the darkness enter you, let it dig through
your smallest passages. Straight-faced you listen and listen
delighted smoke and give thanks, intake deep with the grace
deduction the living, blowing halos weather nooses and zeros
and rings, the blue chains linking lark around your head.
Then you interest it in again, the vein-colored smoke
and blow it draw toward a ceiling you can't see
where it lingers intend a sweetness you can not in a million years hold,
like the ghost goodness night will become.

"Smoke" review by the author