LAURA LEHEW
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Poems


One poem from my book, Becoming (Another New Caligraphy)--
​a non-linear narrative of alcoholism and dementia

She Remembers

the incessant curl of smoke
the clamor of beer cans, the cacophony
the silence before
 
her mother imprints
like a cookie cutter
into drywall
 
her parent’s first house

A poem from my book Willingly Would I Burn, (MoonPath Press)--
​poems themed around Math and Science 

A Word Problem

Four daughters race around me in opposite directions, at a constant rate. They start at the same point and meet every 30 seconds. If they move in the same direction, they meet every 120 seconds. They stay in St. Luke’s seven thousand two hundred minutes; approximately long enough for closure. If a standard vinyl covered innerspring mattress for a hospital bed is 36” x 80,” what is on the mind of each daughter?
 
Hints:
 
1)         Let w = the rate of daughter 1
​
Let x = the rate of daughter 2
Let y = the rate of daughter 3
Let z = the rate of daughter 4
Let a = the rate of the missing son
 
2)         Use substitution or elimination
 
Answer (round each answer individually):
 
Solve for daughter 1: (1)≠(2)
Divert unwanted questions, attempt conversion
 
Solve for daughter 2: (2)≠(3)
Substitute for a thinner daughter
 
Solve for daughter 3: (3)≠(4)
Substitute for a smarter daughter
 
Solve for daughter 4: (4)≠(a)
Substitute for chicken fingers and a loaf of bread
 
Solve for missing son: (a)≠(1)
Substitute for a new family (see daughters x, y, and z)
 
I am in a hospital headed toward home hospice. Its route is circular.

A poem from my chapbook It's Always Night, It Always Rains within Ashes Caught on the Edge of Light: 10 Chapbooks (Winterhawk Press Books)--
murder and noir

Please Don't Text and Drive

a billboard on Highway 40 in St. Louis, MO
 
no
I said no
one wrong thing
the answer
 
a minor stupidity
sorrow and salt
she was my something else
radiance
 
before the bite of the fruit
vengeance splayed
through the afternoon
I wanted her to stay
 
decanted
 
but the gun kept going off
a gun is a gun is a gun
she was made up entirely
of fixed-blade arrows
 
the proper weight of things
taillights in the rain
like a rifle

A poem from my chapbook, Beauty (Tiger's Eye Press)--
fairy tales

The Boy Who Cried Fire

His musty, roll-in-the hay scent lashes her into a wind whipped hunger. His innocence makes her howl. How she desires to plunge into his fine white woolen coat. Consume him. Never overt she pursues him from the shadows. His parents grow leery. Hire a sitter to keep watch over him. Keep him out of trouble.
 
But, the sitter grows bored. Begins looking for distraction. Yells “FIRE” for no real reason but to have the fire department show up. They retreat nodding their heads in sorrow for such a foolish and costly deed. The next day the sitter yells “FIRE” and a neighboring do-gooder calls 911. The police and the fire departments show up. The sitter is roundly chastised, promised a night in jail if he continues this discourse.
 
Meanwhile her intended, driven by the sitter’s repulsive behavior, leaves the comfort of his home and ventures outside. So close she can almost feel him. She waits where she has waited night after night. Curled in the crook of an oak, silent as the lover who waits to be laid bare, for her darling to unearth her. She is nearly invisible in the twilight sky.
 
He senses her at first. Sniffs the air. Calls out bleakly “who is there.” She rises up on her haunches. Looms larger than life in an inopportune halogen moon. He tenses. Quivers. Screams “no.” She licks her lips. He is so juicy she can barely hold back. In the background she hears the sitter screeching “FIRE, FIRE, FIRE” but it is too late. No one is coming. He is ready to be culled. He longs for it. So she does.
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