Poems by Lauren Camp
Quench
What I never needed
folded out before me
on the table by the bar Sometimes
we never stopped
sitting We sat
detached or rapt in the hush
under the low yellow
vocation of light and pronounced
swallows with a rigor of sinking We wasted
whatever we could of the day
and the prized light made me
more peachy I was promise To him
I was ear and action
he could have where we sat
but right now he was clasped
in the maze of drops
on his tongue and waiting
for seize to release He needed this
more than me and wiped his lips
with what he preferred He needed
each trace taken up The man bent his body
toward the glass and he chewed
on the liquid and counted
as the liquid crowded inside
until it became the map
of his simple his heaven
From the Uvula to the Soft Palate
Lauren Camp is the author of three books, most recently One Hundred Hungers (Tupelo Press, 2016), winner of the Dorset Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poetry International, World Literature Today, Beloit Poetry Journal and elsewhere. Some of her poems have been translated into Turkish, Mandarin and Spanish. Lauren is a Black Earth Institute Fellow and a producer/host for Santa Fe Public Radio. www.laurencamp.com.