Thursday, November 22, 2012

FIRST GLASSES

by Laurie Lamon


Fifty years ago I waited
in a room lined with
chairs where everyone
was old behind the dark
glasses that unfolded
and rippled, pressed
to eyes and temples,
and tremulous as my voice
when I read every street
sign and billboard each mile
home, 1963, the world 
for the first time hard
and fast and unmistakable.








Laurie Lamon's work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New Criterion, PloughsharesArts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture, Plume, and other magazines and journals, including 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Ordinary Days, edited by Billy Collins, and thePoetry Daily and Verse Daily websites. In 2007 Lamon received a Witter Bynner award, selected by Poet Laureate Donald Hall. Lamon has also received a Pushcart Prize. Laurie Lamon has two collections of poetry are The Fork Without Hunger and Without Wings, CavanKerry Press (NJ), 2005 and 2009. Lamon is a professor of English at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington and the poetry editor for Rock & Sling.