Becca Lamarre: Three Poems, "Every Time I Push Through a Door"

Becca Lamarre grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana, and still grows nostalgic for the town's many railroad crossings and the distinct smell of it's paper mills. She holds a MA in Higher Education and a BS in Psychology from Ball State University and her fascination with human behavior and motivations strongly influences her writing. She currently lives in Chicago with her family where she is working on her first full-length poetry collection. A sample of her work is forthcoming in Poetry Pacific.

Every Time I Push Through a Door

These days and evenings it’s not so easy

to sink into that place of dreams.

The furniture has been arranged and rearranged

The shadows have lain themselves flat

then stood up straight stretched across

the clock as it keeps score of

the intervals of time that we’re apart.

When the trinkets are moved and shoveled,

when the photos are taped to the wall,

I envision you nodding your approval. 

The bed is shoved up against the best window

in the best place to hear outdoors burst forward;

sirens and weather, and garbage trucks

and drunk girls arguing their way home.

The bed began catty catty corner,

away from the noise but then the quiet

made me ache -

for a city of three million souls

should never be as intimate as a bone.

a building as a good luck charm

Through all of time we fall

with no compass

with no pocket,

it can be more of a float

drift mother backhand swing.

It can be a dive with

no where but sour to go.  

I’ve drawn you my whole life

without knowing it was you.

I can’t help but glance up each day

at your spires, your steel strong

thrusting into the blue of sky or

fading into the urban fog -

you won’t fit inside my pocket,

I can’t rub you or shake you and

there’s nothing quite like you in the suburbs.

You have nothing to hold onto

but if you did

I would take your hands and squeal

not happily,

in utter ancestoral inhibition

You never put up a fight!

And I know nothing of physics

except that I’m infinitely drawn to you.

Drift

There’s an anchor in my backseat

But still I drift

Float away

As if there is an invisible thread

Just holding to the very tip

Of my being

My arm extended to excess

My finger points to you up there

Up up I go

Until the string is pulled taut

And I hover

A second of suspense for

The string may snap

But instead it loosens

And I sink back down down

Open my eyes

I’m in the carport

And it’s time to carry in the groceries

And cook dinner

~Becca Lamarre