Two Poems by Lance Larsen

Two Poems: Lance Larsen

Dutch Woman Riding a Tandem by Herself at Night

is darkness her escort is she ferrying God no one seated behind her but a scrape of wind ghost pedals pedaling under a brimming sky tomorrow my mother will be dead one year

no one seated behind her but a scrape of wind

I’m an orphan on vacation a son heavy with home tomorrow my mother will be dead one year this empty seat a reminder this frieze of rain

I’m an orphan on vacation a son heavy with home

I carry stories disguised as Gouda and bread this empty seat a reminder this frieze of rain

I forgot the bananas should I buy more tea

I carry stories disguised as Gouda and bread she has turned the corner vanishing into mist I forgot the bananas should I buy more tea the canal burbles on all purl and slosh she has turned the corner vanishing into mist is a lover waiting or a child with a broken arm the canal burbles on all purl and slosh a glistening hymn I’ll hum all the way home

is a lover waiting or a child with a broken arm ghost pedals pedaling under a brimming sky a glistening hymn I’ll hum all the way home is darkness her escort is she ferrying God

A brief history of uranium

My silence at dinner was like the Great Wall of China, a looming thing, cold to the touch. Hers was more atmospheric, a slippery front moving in, all black cloud quiet, then snarly as cats. I blockaded myself in the corner with the latest coup in Venezuela via CNN, blockades of tires and burning cars, dead dogs and armed aunts. She clumped upstairs to rearrange our bedroom, happiness sparking each time she thought of me and found a new chair to bang around. Later, when we met in the kitchen, like sweaty seven-year-olds who can’t stay apart for long, she handed me a ratty piece of paper. Arrows and numbers, cross-outs and exclamation points, a chart of some sort. What’s this, I said, but she had disappeared up the stairs. A shopping list in smudged cypher? A lunatic’s guide to a corn maze? A brief history of uranium? Stare long enough and some documents translate themselves. I was holding The Desire Calendar, (her nickname for it): a schedule from way back in grad school days for trying to get pregnant in a soggy one-bedroom walkup in Houston. The x’s represented best days to try, many of them circled, meaning mission accomplished. But why the isosceles triangles? Why the angel face? No specific month or year given. Who needs everything fixed when you’re young and drowning in desire? Or should that be, fueled by? Carried on the gossamer wings of?

Skating barely above? Saved from everyday sadness thanks to? Another life that was, in a more blissy naïve century, in a hungry state we stole from Mexico. I folded and unfolded that love map, sniffed it for traces of that humid world (of us?), then padded upstairs to do reconnaissance or be court marshalled or fix supply lines, whatever idiot patrol we could dream up to once again lie down.