Lori Desrosiers

Lori 2022 photo

Lori Desrosiers' poetry books are The Philosopher’s Daughter, Sometimes I Hear the Clock Speak, and Keeping Planes in the Air, all from Salmon Poetry. Two chapbooks, Inner Sky and Typing with e.e. cummings, are from Glass Lyre Press.

Desrosiers edits and publishes two journals, Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry and Wordpeace.co, a digital literary and art project dedicated to peace and social justice.

Sunset before Rain is Desrosiers' third microchap collection.

•

► Lori's microchaps & poems are available below.

Microchaps		Poems
Sunset before Rain
Click Title to download micro Cover: Dandelions, First Flowers by author •	Sunset before Rain Sky, I don’t know what has colored you this deep shade of pink, is it fuchsia, mauve, or magenta? Can it be there is a fire burning beyond rooftops and spruce forest, or is it steam from this week’s unseasonable heat, rising toward tonight’s rain, bending to kiss the dust, earth sweating with desire. Dandelions grow in the sidewalk cracks by the east wall of our house. Grey swallows with blue heads nest in the old bird house hung on the neighbor's red barn, pop their tiny heads out, the hole not much bigger than my thumb.	Yard in Summer How light hits a cock-of-the-woods mushroom on the oak tree I see on my daily walk, summer grass grows longer and greener under the Norway spruce in the back yard. How nature is a balm to me even though I don’t know the names of all the flowers. Maples in Fall Our Japanese maple loses its leaves late, adds a carpet of reds to the fallen yellows wind-born from our neighbor’s sugar maple. .	Icicles Winter settles on the house, a quiet blanket of snow. Blue icicles hang and drip, tick, tick against yellow siding. • Lori Desrosiers © 2022
Legacy
Click title to download microchap Art work: “lost time’ by Anne lisse Molini - Everything that is is already past •	Skate Pond, 1962 (Age 7) Skating alone, someone grabs my hand and pulls I almost fall. It is the end of the terrible formation called a whip. Ten or twenty big kids holding hands, going much too fast for me. I tumble and am dragged along, until they let me go. I limp across the ice, all skate strings, and bloody knees . Nobody comes to check. Nobody cares. Flutter Gone are the days of bubble gum and bloody knees the patter of feet on stairs, the spilling over of bath water backyard hose play high squeals and fighting words battles for who was first to the car, to the table everything but to bed the night time fights which finished with a book or a song, the long look after my children slept, a wish to stop time’s flutter to let them be small a while.	Picking up Janet’s Violin To my surprise 40 years since I picked up a violin, I can still play the high notes in the Firebird Suite and the beginning of Scheherazade. Tuning is harder. My arm lacks the strength to push the pegs, but my ear still knows the precise intervals and where to place a finger without frets. Stuck Bee My friend’s bees stay mainly in her yard but one of them landed on my car snuck its small body between the wiper and the windshield, discovered on the highway translucent wings a wild flutter holding onto glass in the wind. Pulling off the first exit the bee was gone leaving a film of pollen and bits of wing.	Legacy Everything that is is already past. We live a minute— childhood to old age. So think on this, ponder what will last, heroic deeds or words upon the page? • Lori Desrosiers © 2012
Water Lust
Click Title to download microchap Poems previously published by Gold Wake Press' mini-chapbook series •	FLOWER BELLS AT BEDHEAD (Monet - Flower beds at Betheuil) somnolent blossoms die every winter rebirth in spring to fill our yard and the neighbor's with the ringing of leaf & petal the smell of dirt & essence each year smells more pungent than the last CAP MARTEN NEAR MENTON Liar with a cap that Marten mentons, let us lie s’il vous plaît, braids plaited three strands she cries don’t go near him not that liar don’t think he won’t cap you offer you Monet bury you under a painted field of oil on canvas.	MEADOW WITH HAYSTACKS NEAR GIVERNEY There is a small child with hair as white as hay hiding behind the haystack in M. Monet’s tres belle peinture he is peeing in the hay but you can’t see him or his zizi, or hear his mother calling she is souper him in to très faché avec lui he is too clever at hiding la ceinture WATER LILIES Monet on the bridge the one you can’t see dans la peinture, watching the lilies float below his feet someone would have brought him un carafe de vin un citron pressé or perhaps to stave the thirst unquenched watching water day after day le grand peintre a un soif terrible et cruèle apporte-lui encore du l'eau to quench his water lust	THE CLIFF WALK, POURVILLE After the umbrella flew out of her hands it was carried away by le vent maritime Alors, le Grand Peintre painted it right back again leaving her and her friend up on that cliff with hats on and parapluie intact forever. • Lori Desrosiers © 2009

Poets