Two Poems by Laura Orem
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Letter from Guantanamo
Seasons don’t matter except
for the discomfort they bring.
June is just hotter.
The Caribbean thuds against Cuba,
steaming like soup, saltier
than our tears,
if anyone cried here.
Whether we bear it or not,
the pain continues.
The interrogator takes his work
as seriously as Michelangelo
considered the perfect pink
of God’s fingertips.
Once I ate sweet dates and dreamed
of doing something important.
Now the sun, that holy eye,
stares down on the sea and sand,
strikes us blind.
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Radium Girls
We make time luminesce,
our numbers bright as moonglow.
Precise work, oh yes – we lick the brush sharp
after three, after six, then nine, then twelve.
Our quotas absorb us, hunched over the table
ten hours a day, until six o’clock Friday
unlocks us like a key from our benches,
and we are girls again. We splash
giddy magic on our fingertips and hair,
trace brilliant strokes across our eyelids
to dazzle sweet boys on Saturday night.
Such pretty pixies, how we sparkle and dance!
In unseen places, we are cracking and crumbling.
Our bones shatter and burn.
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A note from Laura: If you enjoy knowing that Writers Resist exists, please consider a small contribution, so we can continue to give our writers and artists a little something. Contributions are gratefully accept here. Thanks for reading!
Laura Orem, a poetry editor at Writers Resist, is a poet, essayist and visual artist. She’s the author of Resurrection Biology (Finishing Line Press 2017) and the chapbook Castrata: a Conversation (Finishing Line Press 2014). Laura received an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College and taught writing for many years at Goucher College in Baltimore.
A featured writer at the Best American Poetry blog, Laura’s poetry, essays and art have appeared in many journals, including Nimrod, Zocalo Public Square, DMQ, Everlasting Verses, Blueline, Atticus Review, Barefoot Review, OCHO, and Mipoesias. She lives on a small farm in Red Lion, Pennsylvania with her husband, three dogs, and so many cats she’s afraid to say.
Both poems appear in Resurrection Biology (Finishing Line Press 2017).
Radiolite watches photo credit: Collectors Weekly.
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