A Literary Feast

Posts by Laurel Damashek

The River Squid

Posted on July 14th, 2014

You’ll start with a terrific love, and later replace it with a merely serviceable love, but cheaper. There was no plesiosaur but there was a kronosaur.   When you swim the central channel your stellate ganglion remembers its jaws and the alarm shocks down the mantle. Now you know what it’s like to be prey.   Up ashore there are rote chants on oak pews. Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest To give and not to count the cost To fight and not to heed the wounds To toil and not to seek for rest To labor and not to ask for any reward save that in knowing that we do thy will   Tough syntax for a cephalopod. You…

Lyrids

Posted on July 14th, 2014

I like to get unhinged in early spring: Hung over from dark, I want to spark a light that should be left out in the cold. I’ve caught magnesium flare of slow-streak meteors, twice. The first, in Boston, walking home too late: I saw it bright above the bridge. You blinked. Then later, soft warm night in Monterey, A sizzle by the bay, grand fireball shed pieces of itself as it went out. That one burned close enough to remark upon. Burned close enough to catch a sudden scrap of what you will; enough to draw a breath, lie still ’til March, when sun comes back to us and cold ground splits from burgeoning new words. Orthogonal to what we say, the heat of…