Three Poems by Lauren Eggert-Crowe

I. On Renunciation of the world (asceticism)

I shut doors. Fasted
and fastened bolts.

Do not think
the hunger

can be starved.
The heart grew

stubborn. The pictures
are staining, like salt,

like ink. I walked away.
There was nowhere

to walk to, but around
the locked room.

 

V. On painstaking and true repentance, which constitutes the life of the holy convicts, and about the Prison

It is not enough. The steel
is immovable. As time. The time

harder than stone floor. Flatten
yourself into your regret. Allow

your body to be stomped on.
What I mean is,

be supportive
of the ones who locked you in.

 

IX. On remembrance of wrongs

The incorrect word.
The incorrect way in which to lean against a porch post.
The incorrect rainsound.
The incorrect choice of breath between.
The incorrect hour and the incorrect dreams after.
The incorrect push (as soap bar on shinbone).
The incorrect motion/hand not flat not spread like a star, so a dull land.
The incorrect woman.
The incorrect process/the imagining, the not letting‒—
The incorrect season dragging its heat through our hair.
The incorrect body.
The incorrect weeping body.
The incorrect hinge.
The incorrect cloth and to the brow.
The incorrect ability to shake and not shake.
The incorrect correction so we write over again again the page is tattered ink–

 

---

About the Author:

Lauren Eggert-Crowe was born and raised in rural Pennsylvania and now lives in Los Angeles, where she is the reviews editor of TROP. She has written for Salon, The Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown, and L.A. Review of Books. Her poetry appears in Sixth Finch, Maintenant, Interrupture, Puerto Del Sol, DIAGRAM, Terrain.org, So To Speak, Alligator Juniper, OccupyWriters, and We Are So Happy To Know Something, among others. Her poetry has also been set to music, in “Diary of a Black Widow,” a multisectional song setting by contemporary composer Christopher Pratorius, which premiered with the Santa Cruz Chamber Players in 2010.

She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: In The Songbird Laboratory, from Dancing Girl Press, and The Exhibit, forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press, Winter 2013. For eleven years, she published the literary feminist ‘zine, Galatea’s Pants, which Microcosm Publishing named one of the Top 100 ‘Zines by Women, and which was featured in the textbook, Girls’ Studies by Elline Lipkin. Galatea’s Pants was included in the San Jose Museum of Art’s “Art of ‘Zines” exhibit in 2004 and can be found in many ‘zine libraries across the country.