STACEY Z LAWRENCE - POEMS

Stacey Z Lawrence teaches Poetry and Creative Writing in New Jersey. Her poems have appeared in Big Windows Review, Chaleur Magazine and others.

​CLOSER

​June

We always take the furthest spot, eager to walk
the flat expanse of Sloan Kettering’s parking lot.
On occasion he smiles in these first days
swollen with hope,
late June sunshine on his shoulders,
the Dogwood just in bloom
browning white petals kiss pavement.

​

​August

​Hot, he waves a limp wrist
motioning me to park nearer.
The tree is laden with green leaves now,
people walk, wipe sweat from eyes.
His clammy hand clenches the bag he still carries
relentless Jersey humidity further stifles his breath .

​November

​It spread
hip, kidney, bone.
The cane hobbles him from car to front door
where a lobby is filled with mums and pumpkins.
His wool cap fits loosely now, his face still beautiful-
chiseled, sunken. His sweater
slips off his back, a skinny boy
in daddy’s clothes.

​February

​The wheels on his chair thin, snow deep.
His final infusion -
a mere crucifixion, we
are met by his Simon of Cyrene, sipping
coffee, laughing with security as
I recline the seat and
writhe him out of our car
like burnt bread, fallen too deep
into the toaster.

​LAST FIRST NIGHT

I pose we smoke
(the pleasure we can
still partake in)
but 
7 becomes 8
8 becomes 9
and you are still
on the other side
of the locked door,
ursus in hibernation.

So I mark time
mull red wine
with cardamom
and lemon peel
pour the spirit
into porcelain
teacups and pass
to my teenage children
late popsicles
on a summer night.

At 11:55 you appear
your once strong body
fading with the year
you hobble a few steps
in striped pajamas
that Jew from Treblinka
watching Anderson Cooper.

I graze your shoulder,
strands of
your silver hair-
too weak to inhale
you peck me instead
with chapped lips as
your last year begins.

​

FINAL EDIT
for Jamal Khashoggi

​She waits
down the street from the Mövenpick
Istanbulis love cinema
as foreigners carve and slice him
first into slabs, then manageable portions.
Hard men
clad in blue denim, Italian loafers and
diplomatic immunity-
imported bonesaw, electric defibrillator
and staple guns
loyal to acting-king and country
they arrange
gristle
and bone
across a multiplicity of
black plastic bags,
red circles on
a twister mat,
inside the cookie-cutter
ottoman mansion, on the doors
swords crossed-
where citizens seek
asylum from men like these-
daytrippers assemble the
pieces
to deposit into
discrete vats of hydrofluoric
and pour the
meddlesome pundit
down
the 
sewer.

she waits

​THE LAST POLITICAL CARTOONIST

​His tongue tenses
between his lips as
he runs his pen across the paper, hunched
a neuroscientist over some
instrument. At work,
he reverts
clever boyishness
varying shades of lead and Pantone,
vicious politics, clarion calls
secreted in speech balloons floating
from scratchy lips and empty minds,
caricatures of those we love
to hate, it is him
we rely upon to lampoon
them, so he indulges, stretching The First,
graphite on Bristol board, CMYK, 300 dpi
But when he colors outside
the line, even a tiny bit,
we squirm
we whine
we scratch him out,
erase

​SONNY’S BAGELS

The jar says tips for girls
the girls are old,
round & Russian
thick sexy accents
Borscht with Sour Cream.

Poured into fitted jeans
gems mounted on rear pockets,
hunched over worn countertops
they sweep butter across

bread, fling beads of
sweat with dingy sleeves.
August in Jersey,
both ovens blasting.

Blushing, I drop a dollar,
she grants me a nod
as her colleague hands me a present,
wrapped in parchment.

​