Lauren Davis
My Mind is a Regret
After Plath
There will be enlightenment,
cold berries which make my teeth ache,
a dark cat stalking a lethargic wasp.
I wonder sometimes what it is to be happy.
It must be forest-hued, or honied, or polished.
It must be something I’ve noticed flickering
at the boundary of my vision, and when I turn
towards it I see December and its many clouds.
What if I told you that even
the rosebushes—innocent, taking such
small breathes—even they hurt me?
That everything mesmerizing and soft guides
me to an edge, snowless.
Lauren Davis
Lauren Davis is the author of the forthcoming short story collection The Nothing (YesYes Books), the poetry collection Home Beneath the Church (Fernwood Press), the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize short-listed When I Drowned (Kelsay Books), and the chapbooks Each Wild Thing’s Consent (Poetry Wolf Press) The Missing Ones (Winter Texts), and the forthcoming Sivvy (Whittle Micro-Press). She holds an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She is a former Editor in Residence at The Puritan’s Town Crier, and she is the winner of the Landing Zone Magazine’s Flash Fiction Contest. Her stories, essays, poetry, interviews, and reviews have appeared in numerous literary publications and anthologies including Prairie Schooner, Spillway, Poet Lore, Ibbetson Street, Ninth Letter and elsewhere. Davis lives with her husband and two black cats on the Olympic Peninsula in a Victorian seaport community.