What’s Broken

By Dorianne Laux b. 1952 Dorianne Laux

The slate black sky. The middle step

of the back porch. And long ago

my mother’s necklace, the beads

rolling north and south. Broken

the rose stem, water into drops, glass

knobs on the bedroom door. Last summer’s

pot of parsley and mint, white roots

shooting like streamers through the cracks.

Years ago the cat’s tail, the bird bath,

the car hood’s rusted latch. Broken

little finger on my right hand at birth—

I was pulled out too fast. What hasn’t

been rent, divided, split? Broken

the days into nights, the night sky

into stars, the stars into patterns

I make up as I trace them

with a broken-off blade

of grass. Possible, unthinkable,

the cricket’s tiny back as I lie

on the lawn in the dark, my heart

a blue cup fallen from someone’s hands.

Source: Facts About The Moon (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 2007)

Biography

Dorianne Laux is the author of several collections of poetry, including Awake (1990); What We Carry (1994), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Smoke (2000); Facts about the Moon (2005), chosen by the poet Ai as winner of the Oregon Book Award and also a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; and The Book of Men (2011). She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National . . .

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