In Of Roots and Wreckage, Laura A. Lord moves us with the imagery that has come to define her poetry. Whether looking into the brutal truths of where one calls home to moments of reveling in the joy and pain of an aging body – Lord is to exploring in raw honesty the smallest of moments and describes with startling clarity the mysteries that move and break us.
Want to win a free copy of Laura’s Of Roots and Wreckage?
Enter Laura’s Goodread’s Giveaway Here!
Her newest collection, Of Roots and Wreckage, focuses heavily on where she grew up. Split into three sections, this collection explores the ideas of “roots” and hometowns, of people and change, of aging and death.
Here is a selection from Of Roots and Wreckage:
Sometimes Death Looks like Christmas Breakfast
He is preoccupied with my age.
Three times this week
he has tried on,
as if fitting a new shirt
and tie,
the emperor’s voice:
commanding,
in charge,
in control.
“You can’t get older.”
Yes, your majesty.
So the soft skin crinkles
at the corner of his eyes –
tracks of worry.
The railroad trance,
where imagination runs rampant
and he sees me
spread like a ragdoll,
draped – a cloth of human existence.
Like the scene from Gozilla
where the soldiers were scattered,
play things,
and he shoved in handfuls of popcorn
while asking
“Is that what dead looks like?”
Sometimes.
Sometimes it looks like Christmas breakfast –
where I am frying bacon
as eggs congeal on plates,
and I am aware she is not in her seat.
More aware of her absence, then,
than in the hours, days, before.
Yes, sometimes death looks like Christmas breakfast.
Laura A. Lord is the author of numerous collections of vignettes and poetry and one awesome children’s book about a T-Rex screwing up her entire day. It’s absolutely a true story. Laura’s work has been featured in The Beacon, The Collegian, Whirl with Word, Tipsy Lit, Precipice, Scary Mommy, The Powder Room, The Reverie Journal, and Massacre Magazine.
You can find this author and poet in all these wonderful places!
Leave a Reply