Lola Haskins’s poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, The Christian Science Monitor, The London Review of Books, Beloit Poetry Journal,Georgia Review, Southern Review, etc. and has been broadcast on NPR and BBC. Her most recent book is Desire Lines (BOA, 2004). This includes new poems as well as selections from all her previous books except The Rim Benders (Anhinga, 2001) and Extranjera (Story Line, 1989). Among […]
She tends the red geraniums. When their clustered eyes go dark, she cuts them from their stems. With her thumb she strokes the furry leaves, not like common cloth but the nap and shift of velvet falling heavy over her hips, the long slow dance of Paris, in France. The swoony glide of his knife […]
A rod jammed into the sand the thin line from its tip to the sea relaxed and him down the beach picking up broken angels’ wings with a boy’s faith in what swims in deep water when suddenly, raptly, his rod bends and he pounds towards it, pounds heart-footed towards what is silver and struggles […]
He is waiguo ren: foreigner. When he walks to the market his dark head sees over theirs as if he were a child, held on his father’s shoulders. They point at him and stare. He is twenty-one, and empty as a thousand-years old wine jug. He is also in love, not with what is foreign […]
Chicago, Illinois Rows of rectangles rise, set into brick. And in every rectangle, there is a lamp. Why should there be a lamp in every window? Because in all this wide city, there is not enough light. Because the young in the world are crazy for light and the old are afraid it will leave […]
She tries it on, like a dress. She decides it doesn’t fit and starts to take it off. Her skin comes, too. El Amor y La Mujer Se lo prueba, como si fuera un vestido. Decide que no le queda, Y empieza a quitarselo. Su piel se desprende, tambien.
He was born with the fingerpads of the blind. By eight he could tell if someone had been at the piano before him, and how long before, and who. Beginning Fur Elise one November afternoon, he burst into storms of tears because his sister had banged her tuneless anger the night before, and he felt […]
Lola Haskins reading Winston, you were wrong, recorded live at Messalonskee High School, Oakland, Maine, September 30, 2005. Ms. Haskins is a member of the board of directors of From the Fishouse. She is the author of eight collections of poetry, the most recent is Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems (BOA, 2004).