The Blog

Jessica Laser recites "Poem with Lies" from our Fall 2014 issue. 

Laser's poems have appeared in Boston Review, Lana Turner, jubilat, Petri Press, and elsewhere. A graduate of Brown University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she teaches writing in Purchase, NY. For more: jessicalaser.com

1
Solitary man, standing
on the Atlantic, high up on the floodtide
under the moon, hauling at nets
which shudder sideweays under the mutilated darkness:
the one you hugged and slept with so often,
who hugged you and slept with you so often,
who has gone away now
into that imaginary moonlight
of the greater world, perhaps looks back at where you stand abandoned
on the floodtide, hauling at nets
and dragging from the darkness
anything, and feels tempted to walk over
and touch you
and speak
from that world to which she acquiesced so suddenly dumbfounded
but instead she only sings
in the sea-birds and breeze that you imagine you remember but that you truly hear
as the dawn breaks in streaks across the fish-flashed water.