Volume 3 Number 1 • Spring 2011
A little unhappiness is not a bad thing.
Young women walk with restless children at midnight, three hundred years
I've walked with a stone at the back of my heel.
It's a diamond no one sees.
What drove you from your refuge today, with something so precious in your arms?
I'd like to help. May I keep your despair in my breast pocket?
A simple memory like bones snapping and the taste of hot tears.
The moon is headlights and white gas,
Skin tissue burned to a thin shine.
Your landscape is bloodless and suffocating.
Your man is running to his mistress.
At twelve o-four on the Chicago line.
The next stop is always better than this one.
Every half hour that sharp desire
For which I'd live all over again:
Useless wishes, helpless love, tearing at my tired heart
Catching on your hair
These little hooks.
What else?
I turned back for my lover.
Our fates are connected –
Ankle to ankle, rib to rib.
He should know that I was serious.
This is the last of it –
Breaking down I increase,
Grain upon grain, the earth.
Kissing away the ragged foam
Whetting the sea with my thirst
Yes. I would like
Something sweet
And freshly skinned.
At the end of the 20th century, Laura Brandenburg interviewed bands and wrote about rock-n-roll for various local periodicals. She was music editor beloved Midwest-based punk rock zine, The Squealer. She simultaneously began giving readings of her poetry around the Twin Cities. She currently co-hosts the Riot Act Reading Series with Paul D. Dickinson, and is working on an MFA in Creative Writing at Hamline University. Ms. Brandenburg lives in Minneapolis.