Laine Derr
Reset
I need a pill to wake,
a pill to sleep, a pill
to teach others what
I do not know, a pill
for grief – coyotes
fatted (bones & bile).
A pill to love, a pill
for hate, a pill light
blue or chalky white.
I’ve grown anxious not
for the great abyss but
for the tally of my days.
Dull, I am a bowling pin,
red striped halo around
my neck, endlessly falling,
righted again, again, again.
I used to be the One but
now I hide wary of my kind
and the rolling wrath first
fancied by a pill-owed child.
A Studio Apartment
Even if she forgets my name
I know this moment, a bed
for two, floor view, bodies
lounging the day away, news
freezing time belongs to us,
barefooted, listening to songs
of sirens floating across poorly
paved cement, heat pretending
not to care, welcoming flesh,
welcoming mouths wide open,
screams offered to the harvest
moon she may remember on
a night like this, black smoke
rising to the blue – our fall.
—
Laine Derr has published interviews with Carl Phillips, Ross Gay, Ted Kooser, and Robert Pinsky. Work has appeared or is forthcoming from LIT Magazine, J Journal, The Healing Muse, Full Bleed + The Phillips Collection, ZYZZYVA, Portland Review, Prairie Schooner, Chapter House, and elsewhere.