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Best Poems Written by Lauren Lee

Below are the all-time best Lauren Lee poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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How To Feel When Your House Burns Down

How to Feel When Your House Burns Down
The home you are raised in is a mother tongue. 
I was four when it was built, an age when innocence
turns river water and all that lives within to blood.
First birthdays and first dances fortify the mantel. 
This home transports milestones, our own vessel
to move us from sidewalk chalk to the attempt to outrun  
 
the stagnancy found only in the debilitation of the long run. 
At seven, I held him in my arms and love upon my tongue. 
Promises danced on my lips and ran rampant on my vessels. 
College funds started in a baby bottle, tiny wishes held in a cent.
I remember grappling with his growth, attempting to mantle
the affinity we pinky promised deep into our own blood.
 
At twelve, my father taught me to dance in the blood 
and glass on the hardwood. Still, I watch his fingers run 
to sow flowers in my mother's hair, her back, mantling, 
the image of infatuation, true love, in our minds. A tongue
of tenderness has our childlike innocence  
giggling and shouting at the inamoratas and the vessel 
 
of devotion in which each of us was vesselled 
into this life. Each of us was born in the fervor of blood, 
so sweet. My mother threaded honey, burned incense, 
and chewed lemon slices whole to hold us near. She ran 
baths of salts and oils, to cleanse the ever growing tongue 
of infernos that caressed, more captivated, our mantel 
 
of consciousness. For many years, we tied sheets to mantels. 
With pillows and blankets, we’d build ourselves a vessel
to a land of fairies and warriors who shared the same tongue. 
Pool noodles became swords. Here we spilled blood, 
convincing ourselves if we were to sprint, leap, run 
fast enough we too could fly amongst the rest, innocent
 
to the world around us. At nineteen, I watch the innocence 
leave our home. Adolescent memories that kiss the mantel 
turn to sharp licks in the wild fire that is running 
through the bones of our sweltering home, the vessel 
of affinities, dances, compassion, imagination, and the blood 
that connects it all, now lapped up with tongues, 
 
too heavy for the innocent, a cancerous burn in our vessels.
The mantle of snow is no relief to the flames that drip like blood.
And still, we do not run, we wait for the final lick of a mother's tongue.

Details | Lauren Lee Poem

the girls
He will not let you forget.
You will wear his hands around your throat, a chain of honey and sweat.
His calluses grating across your thighs are still carved in memory,
And with dirt-caked fingernails, he demanded everything you ought to be.
Expect years before you ever trust another lover,
Expect 2:00 AM panic attacks and 11:11 wishes for your mother.
Never again will you forget to leave the house without pepper spray,
Or forgive your dad for the day
He brought you a rape whistle and your brother condoms.
You will not forget who is part of the problem.

I have felt in the heat of the streetlamps, the bruised fingertips of the women before me.
I have fought. I have nursed the kind of fresh
Wounds that only ever seem to come from men from whom
I receive flags staked in my supple flesh.
You pretend to be marauders. You leave the womb,
Only to fight tooth and nail to crawl back to such divinity. Broken men searching
For liberation behind closed legs and crossed arms
To what extent is this too much flirtation, and too little harm?
Too many gulps of the story we are drowning in.
When will “She wanted it” stop painting over the bruises on her skin?
Believe that even in my cries, I did not cry.
Though if not our fault, whose?
The mayor's son? the valedictorian? the businessman? all will be excused.—
Since anyhow we little girls are dead,
Slaughtered each time our legs are forced to spread,
Mourned each time we remember what really happened in that bed,
Buried each time our underwear is rethread.
You spend your days executing, then wondering why there are funerals.
You were born, you were taught consent
That looked like porn. There is blood on your hands, wine-red and iridescent,
Hot and thick. tell me, is it drying? Do you still think you’ve won?
Because I still bleed on anything I touch. Some wounds
cannot be
Undone.

This poem is an imitation response to Gwendolyn Brook's "the mother"

Details | Lauren Lee Poem

Moving Up To Go Down

I am slowly finding recovery is a penrose staircase
I climb, I step, and I see you on my walk to the coffee shop
you wore jeans and a black T-shirt you looked at me like your 
very existence should be an apology and suddenly
I am at the bottom of the staircase 
Climbing, stepping, climbing, stepping…

Details | Lauren Lee Poem

Sticky Fingers

Sticky Fingers 
The first time I knew I was stupid, 
I went to kindergarten and couldn’t figure 
out how to pronounce my name. Forced
to sit on my hands, dirt caked the back
of my throat and soon turned mud as tears
slid down my cheeks. Who am I without
my mother tongue pooling like honey
in my palms? What will I learn to say 
when my fingers run dry and my voice
begs to be used? 
 
In Sign Language, certain words
do not exist. To, be, am, from, of,
are empty shells in my brain.  
And like all little deaf girls,
I was used to my hands  
molding vases to hold words
my lips have not yet learned–  
I was a potter in a room full
of musicians. 
 
When I was a kid, my mom
told me if I grew enough leaves
I’d touch the sun. In every new
syllable that kissed my tongue, 
I grew branches and roots, bark,
and sap. I fought through many winters, 
to live in this spring. And somehow the closer 
I get to the sun, the more I realize she
burns too.

Best Poems Written by Lauren Lee

How To Feel When Your House Burns Down

The Art of Being Empty

The Girls

Moving Up To Go Down

Sticky Fingers