Dorianne Laux on Verse Daily

Today's poem is by none other than Dorianne Laux. It's from Salt Hill Journal, the latest issue of which includes poems by Detroit's own Vievee Francis and Matthew Olzmann.

Surrender

Supine under branches
and blossoms, eavesdropping
on a hummingbird,
the high-pitched flutter
of her seed-sized heart.
Drunk on the scent of apricots.
My spine's thirty-three stones
lined up on the new grass.

I'm a rosy dot on a map's
patch of green, my naked toes
pointing east below gobbets
of buttery sun. Between journeys,
obstacles: water and rock, iron
and chalk dust, the white ribs
of the fence and the gopher's
freshly dug holes.

Petals in tatters on my bare thigh.
the screen door's wheeze
doesn't bother me, the news
still rolled in its red rubber band.

Right now I'm nowhere and no one
cares. Nothing needs me but the dirt
beneath me. The sky gazes down
and doesn't see me. Even the wind

is like a mother, thinking of her lover,
as she parts my hair.

(Dorianne Laux, from Salt Hill Journal issue 22)