Lance Larsen
Poetry
Lance Larsen is the author of five poetry collections, most recently What the Body Knows (Tampa 2018). His awards include a Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches at Brigham Young University and likes to fool around with aphorisms: “When climbing a new mountain, wear old shoes.” In 2017, he completed a five-year appointment as Utah’s poet laureate.
Envy
The toe would like to be a finger, the naked head
wants to wear a chandelier not another hat.
The pipe pines to be a pansy, the zipper dreams
of cooking tofu. How long will it go on,
this greed for otherness, the boomerang
hoping to give a dying mystic a sponge bath,
the novel dreaming of dipping itself in fondue?
Never content these objects, never willing
to stay in their own lane. Ditto the rest of us.
Let us imitate the alpine lake, envying
the shooting star for a few flashy seconds
but relieved to wake at dawn with ten thousand
trout in our wriggly mouth. Poor harmonica,
possessing the soul of a tuba. Sad crucifix,
wanting to do an internship as a shot glass
before settling down in the vestry. Is life better
as a soufflé or a conjure candle from Haiti?
Never mind, soon you’ll want to be the other.
Only one tastes good with cracked pepper,
only one uses wax and fire to serenade the dead.
“
Milosz writes, ‘The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.’ If this holds true for humans, perhaps it holds true for objects as well? Perhaps they don’t want to remain just one thing. The primitivist in me would like to think so. Why not let them dream beyond their overdetermined station in life?
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