What if, while putting my room in order,
I discover a small child living in the far
corner of the closet? She has provisions,
fruit I can't remember buying.
She seems happy to live here,
amidst shirts and towels folded square.
I can't imagine where she came from.
I'm over thirty; I never should have
cluttered my room so much
I didn't know another life
was held inside it. The worst part
is all the papers I've left on the floor,
unnoticed, piled everywhere. I didn't know
my ideas would add up to something real:
a small child, perfectly content, straggly hair
hanging in her face. I want to touch her,
brush back her hair, but suspect I can't.
If she was born of my neglect,
there's no use holding her now.
isbn 1-59661-074-3
72 pages/$15
Ten years after its initial appearance on our list, Laura Lee Washburn wanted to revisit the poems, rethink the book, and reissue. This is our first reissue, though I hope not the last.
Laura Washburn’s poems make an odd union of the grotesque and the domestic. They suffer a powerful realism while exercising a most eccentric republic of voices. There is something strangely narrow and menacing in the dramatic speeches of Washburn’s poetry and yet there’s also that wonderful sense “of the voice that is great within us.” The emotions, the common scandal of these poems come shockingly close to what we all know about ourselves but nevertheless find unspeakable. This is a young and a brave poetry.
—Norman Dubie
Laura Lee Washburn’s poems are as muscular as they are personal, a joining of spirited opposites into a singularity that will distinguish her in the world of letters. She is onto something all her own. I read her work with pleasure.
—Alberto Ríos