POET OF THE DAY: Dorianne Laux

Dorianne Laux now lives in Raleigh, NC, where she teaches writing in the NC State graduate writing program. Her most recent book, The Book of Men, was published by WW Norton. Go to her website to find out about her many events and projects.

Smoke

Who would want to give it up,

the coala cat's eye in the dark room, no one there

but you and your smoke, the window

cracked to street sounds, the distant cries

of living things. Alone, you are almost

safe, smoke slipping out between the sill

and the glass, sucked into the night

you don't dare enter, its eyes drunk

and swimming with stars. Somewhere

a Dumpster is ratcheted open by the claws

of a black machine. All down the block

something inside you opens and shuts.

Sinister screech, pneumatic wheeze,

trash slams into the chute: leftovers, empties.

You don't flip on the TV or the radio, they

might muffle the sound of car engines

backfiring, and in the silence between,

streetlights twitching from green to red, scoff

of footsteps, the rasp of breath, your own,

growing lighter and lighter as you inhale.

There's no music for this scarf of smoke

wrapped around your shoulders, its finger

scrawling the pale stem of your neck,

no song light enough, liquid enough,

that climbs high enough before it thins

and disappears. Death's shovel scrapes

the sidewalk, critches across the man-made

cracks, slides on grease into rain-filled gutters,

digs its beveled nose among the ravaged leaves.

You can hear him weaving his way

down the street, sloshed on the last breath

he swirled past his teeth before swallowing:

breath of the cat kicked to the curb, a woman's

sharp gasp, lung-filled wail of the shaken child.

You can't put it out, can't stamp out the light

and let the night enter you, let it burrow through

your infinite passages. So you listen and listen

and smoke and give thanks, suck deep

with the grace of the living, blowing halos

and nooses and zeros and rings, the blue chains

linking around your head. Then you pull it in

again, the vein-colored smoke,

and blow it up toward a ceiling you can't see

where it lingers like a sweetness you can never hold,

like the ghost the night will become.