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Best Poems Written by Laine Lubar

Below are the all-time best Laine Lubar poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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American Dream

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.

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The Things That Strangle

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.

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Clothesline View of Brooklyn

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.

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Acrostic Without a Title

Poetry silencer,
Timid words unable to reach paper;
Sound loud in my head
Deafening.

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Stone

speaking a language
without a tongue, telling a
story without words

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Fire

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

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Never Again

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.

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Thoughts On Cemetery Ridge

You are the beautiful antique room, 
half-open, decayed by light and familiar gazes.
Lace curtained windows, like eyes that see only the past, 
you offer wistful, paltry promises of enclosure, 
but as the wind whispers through the cracks in your walls, 
you are too cold to offer life.

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Reigned In Too Early

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.

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Ice Queen Goethe

Sunlight streams through 
the tiny hole in the wall that holds
my heart together;
a crystalline point is trickling 
slow droplets of
ice water the shape of tears.
Slowly melting, I am pouring myself into
my own empty cup.