Here's a recent poem by Dorianne Laux published in Blip, the newish online journal formerly known as Mississippi Review Online. Click on over to their site to read a second poem, "Second Hand Coat," which is a 530 word prose poem, a form that I haven't seen Dorianne write in all that much.Also, in case you haven't heard, Dorianne's new book is forthcoming from Norton. It is called The Book of Men, and it will be released toward the end of February (though these "strict laydown date" poetry books usually have a way of shipping earlier than the date stamped on the website). Here's a link to a poem forthcoming in her new collection: "To Kiss Frank."
First Light
Lightly, she had to touch him lightly,
because he almost wasn’t there, that first boy
who came to her beneath the drunken stars,
clothes unwound like bandages revealing
the flesh that glowed within like bread, salty
clavicle, arched bone filled with marrow
she sucked as her womb shook, the bellows
of her breasts billowing, soft pillows
he now pressed his tilted head against,
his breath unspooling into the hollow
of her throat, lifting the finest hairs
at her neck’s nape. She stroked him then,
like a horse, his long back, his darkling spine,
and watched the grasses on the hills sway
and ripple, listened to the loud crickets
chip away the night. She had stepped
into the oldest church, the windows
broken, her bare feet on stones hauled up
from the valley below thousands of years ago,
the sun and stars still inside them, and she had
stood there, a non-believer, and wept.
Dorianne Laux
from Blip (formerly Mississippi Review Online)
