Dresses from the Old Country
By Laura Read
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About this ebook
Laura Read
Laura Read was born in New York City and has lived most of her life in Spokane, WA. She is the author of Dresses from the Old Country (BOA Editions, 2018), Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012, winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry), and the chapbook The Chewbacca on Hollywood Boulevard Reminds Me of You (winner of the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award, 2011). A recipient of a Washington State Artists Trust Grant, a Florida Review Prize for Poetry, and the Crab Creek Review Prize for Poetry, Laura presents regularly at literary festivals and conferences throughout the Northwest, including GetLit!, Write on the Sound, Litfuse, and the Port Townsend Writers Conference. Laura served as Spokane’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, and she currently teaches at Spokane Falls Community College.
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Book preview
Dresses from the Old Country - Laura Read
Copyright © 2018 by Laura Read
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition
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For information about permission to reuse any material from this book, please contact The Permissions Company at www.permissionscompany.com or e-mail permdude@gmail.com.
Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd.—a not-for-profit corporation under section 501 (c) (3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code—are made possible with funds from a variety of sources, including public funds from the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the County of Monroe, NY. Private funding sources include the Lannan Foundation; the Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation; the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust; the Rochester Area Community Foundation; the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak, and Dan Amzalak; and contributions from many individuals nationwide. See Colophon on page 96 for special individual acknowledgments.
Cover Design: Sandy Knight
Cover Art: Belinda Bryce
Interior Design and Composition: Richard Foerster
Manufacturing: McNaughton & Gunn
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Read, Laura, author.
Title: Dresses from the old country : poems / by Laura Read.
Description: First edition. | Rochester, NY : BOA Editions, Ltd., [2018] | Series: American poets continuum series ; no. 168
Identifiers: LCCN 2018015160 (print) | LCCN 2018018260 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942683674 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942683667 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Classification: LCC PS3618.E224 (ebook) | LCC PS3618.E224 A6 2018 (print) | DDC 811/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018015160
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
In Praise of Shadows
I
Vaccination
Here Is a Map
The Sunshine Family
Adrian!
Flashdance
Bali Ha’i
Renaissance Body
Ghost Clothes
Alaska
That Last Time
Introduction to Poetry
Thinking of You
Gloves
Ferguson’s
When You Have Lived a Long Time in One Place
Metaline Falls
Colonel George Wright Shot 800 Horses Here
St. Aloysius Gonzaga, Pray for Us
Faulkner’s Emily
Gemini
Bureau
II
When I Think About What I Know About My Heart
You Are on the Green Level
What the Body Does
People Don’t Die of It Anymore
Pentecost
Accelerated Learning
Brown in the Brown Branches
Douchebag
Briar Rose
July
State Line
Wicked
Invagination
Beth and Her Piano
Last Night Ferguson’s Caught Fire
Cathedral
Apollo 9
Spring and Fall
Mary’s Waking Dream
The Big Chill
100-Year-Old Box of Negatives Discovered by Conservators in Antarctica
Ruins
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Colophon
for Brad, Ben, and Matthew
There was a choice of pie for dessert, and one was blueberry and one was apple, and the waitresses were the same country girls, there having been no passage of time, only the illusion of it as in a dropped curtain—the waitresses were still fifteen; their hair had been washed, that was the only difference—they had been to the movies and seen the pretty girls with the clean hair.
—from Once More to the Lake
by E. B. White
IN PRAISE OF SHADOWS
Junichirō Tanizaki says the Japanese
love shadows, their lights low
when they eat, their silverware tarnished.
Tanizaki asks, Why so much shine?
He wants to raise the lacquered bowl
to his lips and stare into its darkness,
a lake you can slip inside,
your body glowing like the moon
casting its own shadow on the surface,
larger, smudged, a moon
that’s been crying, its face puffy and soft.
What kind of child names her yellow dog
Shadow? How did I know she would become
the shape of our grief, following
my mother’s body when she went down
to do laundry, the sheets always needing
to be changed, at the end several times a day?
Last night I dreamed of a canvas
with something painted in each corner,
a girl, a boy, a window, water.
I could only see one piece of the painting
at a time, I was sick and