New Poetry by Laurinda Lind

En Plein Air

I've taken my class outside
so they can write paragraphs
about any damn thing instead
of staying squeezed between walls
which they will do soon enough
once snow starts. Up north here
when the freeze falls we don't 
get up from under it for weeks 
and months of our lives in our 
winter suits that look like us but 

are our cold-weather aunties 
and uncles. Now, while they 
are still their own nieces and 
nephews, they hand me their essays
instead of waiting till Tuesday

since they were so happy out 
in the air. Fifteen minutes we 
were alive in the breeze and sun. 
Five days from now we'll all be 
dead, but the dead are different 
relatives, just our DNA gone 
underground a while or for 
the weekend, which is exactly 
the way we will play it
tied inside on Tuesday.



- Laurinda Lind 2018

Laurinda Lind lives in New York's North Country, near Canada. Some poetry acceptances/ publications have been in Another Chicago Magazine, Antiphon, Antithesis, Comstock Review, Paterson Literary Review, Sonic Boom, and Stand; also anthologies Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan (New Rivers Press) and AFTERMATH: Expressions of Loss and Grief (Radix Media). In 2018, she won first-place awards for the Keats-Shelley Prize for adult poetry and the New York State poetry competition.