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Laine Lubar Poem
Platinum blonde, gray eyes like the polluted clouds over a Kiev sky,
heavy black coat covers the dress her mother hated,
a young woman in heels and hidden flapper dress,
its fringe brushed the skin above her knees, forbidden rouge in her pocket.
In 1922, she walked alone for the first time in her life, no brother
or lover to accompany her,
only the sound of her heels in the snow on Pitkin Avenue.
At Abe Stark’s Clothing store, she sees not the suit she pressed her cheek against,
not the smooth coldness of her lover’s shoulder under her lips, but a decent man dancing at his wedding.
She must marry.
The thought turns her away from the dark fabric of love affairs and chases her down to Atlantic Avenue.
When she hops the Brighton Line, it follows her,
finally catching her when she stops to catch her breath on the beach,
the heels sinking into the sand and snow,
not so cold for a woman who has seen Minsk, she smiles.
Americans know nothing about winter.
The coat falls a little off her shoulders, she doesn’t mind.
A defiant flick of her finger and her curls shimmer in the cold breeze,
winter light reflecting in her eyes, in her eastern European pride,
the one her sisters deny, the one her mother hushes up with a stern look that says ‘be American.’
Her sisters are already married, her mother already widowed again,
her last husband living long enough to stand before a judge and vouch for her ability to speak English and eat ham, long enough to get her wrapped in the red, white, and blue.
She must marry, the waves tell her. Behind her there is a man who watches, concerned about a lone woman on the beach. ‘He will do,’ she thinks, as she turns from the sea into America.
Copyright © Laine Lubar | Year Posted 2019
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Laine Lubar Poem
A pen quivering above a page,
a thought drips hesitantly, like sweat
in the heat of fear.
Water does not quench this,
the dry around my voice that
stops my sound
before it reaches the world.
When I reach into the heart of me,
my words lay covered
under a quilt of words
others have used to describe me,
a patchwork identity:
stupid, worthless,
asexual.
In the space between creativity
and the paper that holds my words,
there is a wall of voices,
judging – my mother
laughing at the angst
of a tortured attempt to
understand sexuality,
pretty girls noting
every flaw I’ve ever hid
deciphering my secrets
on the bathroom walls –
these are the things that
constrict my throat,
stop my voice.
Copyright © Laine Lubar | Year Posted 2019
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Laine Lubar Poem
A man who destroys one woman
destroys generations.
Silence follows silence....
These footsteps you no longer walk
are not mine anymore.
As you turn to dust in the grave
that houses the unfulfilled carcass
you waited your whole life to become,
your pages yellowed and blurred reach me
without your mortal voice and I am
illuminated.
Copyright © Laine Lubar | Year Posted 2019
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Laine Lubar Poem
Window viewing a wall
knows no world other than
brick square against nothing;
laundry blows in the yellow
tinged wind. Flaps mimic
birds flying. Bras trapped by
wooden pins, splintering. Grey
points piercing smoldering
dust and fiber on its way
to the refuse below. A push
from an unseen hot whisper
of foul breath smashes it
into a window viewing a wall.
Copyright © Laine Lubar | Year Posted 2019
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Laine Lubar Poem
Poetry silencer,
Timid words unable to reach paper;
Sound loud in my head
Deafening.
Copyright © Laine Lubar | Year Posted 2019
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Laine Lubar Poem
speaking a language
without a tongue, telling a
story without words
Copyright © Laine Lubar | Year Posted 2019
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Laine Lubar Poem
Fire like anger,
wrap heat around the moist
parts of me,
pink membranes
exposed to cold.
Fire like anger, burn
away the feeling of
knobby fingers in tiny spaces,
twisting gossamer fabric
tearing silky skin.
Fire like anger,
cauterize my childhood,
fill gaps in memory with
bloated fabricated
pictures of sweet
childhood, darkly edged,
the easy lie the willful
believe.
Fire like anger, shut
my eyes, let me
flinch from your
light, your heat,
away from the passion
of languid bodies
undulating under the summer sun,
away from warm
fingers slipped
into mine tingling
pads rubbing
in secret.
Fire like anger,
char my useless
bones, the transparent
muscles under
bulbous weight.
Fire like anger
explode, incinerate
me, imprint me on
the sidewalk, the shadow
of me never illuminated
Copyright © Laine Lubar | Year Posted 2019
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Laine Lubar Poem
She comes, Hail Gloria, growing in her approach,
wind and sea rising together, embracing.
She washes over me in her ardent desire, touching, tasting, loving.
The sand, her fingers, raking, biting,
dots of blood well where she touches me.
My hair entwined with Her,
she heaves her force against my body and I kneel,
submissive, gloriously in love and pain.
She brushes my cheek, water drips into my mouth,
the afterglow of Her teeth on my body.
With a gently blown kiss, She flies.
Copyright © Laine Lubar | Year Posted 2019
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Laine Lubar Poem
rain pattering, fogging on the window,
musing on a gray day.
my soul swimming in mud, dropped
left to harden
when the sun shines.
rocks have the souls
abandoned by tired
seekers and wanderers without
a place to hold to
themselves.
Copyright © Laine Lubar | Year Posted 2019
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Laine Lubar Poem
Anonymous whispers, blowing secrets,
softly blown air through lips, syllables
like sidelong glances down cafeteria tables,
avoid directness, avoid contact, see,
girls nearly women don’t speak of love in the same sentence as sex,
girls in tight jeans, hair slicked certain, lips rosebud red, tight,
mouths moving, practiced phrases of shared intimacies,
lowly blown secrets lying between each other, between the
legs of their lovers, fast fleeting moments of heated fluid,
banging winding paths toward popularity.
girls nearly women, see in me your truth, the ineffective no,
the bruised and unwhole, the wild youth
reigned in too early.
Copyright © Laine Lubar | Year Posted 2019
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