Fall 2016, Volume 21

Poetry by Lauren Camp

Jigsaw Puzzle

It was not the hottest day, and the slanted
light was somewhat extravagant when we

went through a side door into the large building
where a woman and two men sat

at a table in this town where we’re always
sitting, this town that plunges its golden

hills from the sky and that woman rose and walked
up to us and told us that today she is crazy, she

used the word crazy twice and I understood
that we each hold our hands open to what

ever is offered, and such effort every day seemed
to keep these three from failure, such luck to fail at

the whole when twice or eight times they’ve
rebuilt it, and they never look out the windows

at the hills because they need to find the very
small centers and what confirms the light and

line of the picture, and all the time they lift
and place each curve and hinge their

eyes to the holes and the three of them
return to the picture that’s been printed

many times, that will be fuller later but is precisely
what they need now every day

since their spouses went silent or died, since they
were damaged by gasps and crossed into

this time when the best thing they can do
is pivot the sides until sleep.

 

 

 

BIO: Lauren Camp is a poet and educator. Her third book, One Hundred Hungers, won the Dorset Prize (Tupelo Press, 2016). She is a 2015-2018 Black Earth Institute Fellow and the producer/host of Audio Saucepan on Santa Fe Public Radio.