CONFECTION Laraine Kentridge Lasdon
Everything I am seems to belong to someone else
Everything I am seems to be someone else
Imagine a memory mirror
framed with pearlescent medallions
painted with miniature portraits of apples,
ginger toffee, and glutinous gummies.
Day and night the mirror reflects
blue-green fields or star-filled skies,
ferris wheels and carousels,
and a young girl
alone, insubstantial,
dressed in spun cotton candy,
sweet, hoping to be liked
in her fairy floss robe.
The glass shatters
my reflection, shifting light,
mirror image wounds,
blood flowing backwards.
I pull thin sharp shards
from the shattered glass
with my bare hands
rendering all semblance,
remembrance, unreliable.
I smile a satirical smile,
a baroque smile of a girl
of a girl who accepts stories
of familial gatherings, embraces
that were never for her.
Everything I am belongs to me
Everything I seem to be, I am
There is no mirror.
Dare to dream at midnight Laraine Kentridge Lasdon Villanelle style verse March 2022
Dare to dream at midnight
Eyes close, head on downy pillow
Safe to fly to fantastic lands of light
A dream weave with moon rays bright
Will take you to a place of golden glow
If you dare to dream at midnight
Those who dream reach a marvelous height
To capture sweet essence before sunrise halo
Dare to remember your dream in the morning light
COMING TO TERM IN THE USA 2022 Laraine Kentridge Lasdon
who are we to talk of women’s rights
or the travesties of cultures of bans
when our Supreme court becomes
a pawn of pandering politics
and we are no better than
them
how many two year olds
must be beaten
left in closets to die
with no Hail Mary’s
to mark their death
twenty year old mother
nineteen year old boyfriend
sit in jail for the rest of their lives
foster children
sleep in offices, under tables
unwanted
and
and
with wanton abandon
the powerful use
every tool they have
to silence sober practitioners
of abortion and education
forcing birth and poverty
on young women pregnant
rape, incest, or ignorant
about their own body
father-father, boyfriend-father
unaware, or not required to care
(as my father-father willfully
controlled me the injustice stings)
wrapped in judicial cloak of cynicism
the Court decamps
intoning platitudes
and buries Roe vs Wade
there is nowhere to turn
the baby is still born
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