NOT IN A CERTAIN LIGHT                                      

In the mirror I see a thinning version

of myself and think of monitors

that tracked ions while I held my breath—

the magnet’s knock as consonance

thrummed the body’s narrow space,

then further in to earthly bone

lit up like ghost or cloud—sound

marking measurement of is and isn’t.

This morning, past mid-April, tulips

are weighed with snow, the green

blazoned on the ground. No use

to sweep and lift them like pyres meant

to float rough fires. They’re child-size

as the leaves I speared at tip and stem

and filled with petals—early deaths

unmoored on water by my early hands.

Laurie Lamon's work has appeared in The Atlantic, New Republic, New Criterion, Ploughshares, and other journals. Her two collections of poetry are The Fork Without Hunger (2005) and Without Wings (2009), both from CavanKerry Press. Lamon is a professor of English at Whitworth University.