Laura Turnbull
~
Writer

Laura Turnbull ~ WriterLaura Turnbull ~ WriterLaura Turnbull ~ WriterLaura Turnbull ~ Writer
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Laura Turnbull
~
Writer

Laura Turnbull ~ WriterLaura Turnbull ~ WriterLaura Turnbull ~ Writer
  • Welcome
  • Blog
  • Poetry
  • Coaching and Tutoring
  • About Me
  • Favorites
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selected poetry

untitled

You wrote me a snack - 

then delivered a meal, of you

your heart, your hands.


You, the maker. Me, 

the taker. Butterflies in

poems and hard clay,


the sky and your smile

in colors newly familiar.

You have read my hunger.


You have let me read you. I need 

to give, too, parts of me 

we both require. Now


I offer, and you take

to my laugh, my curve, the

vintage me. I am your snack


your meal, your olives. Your dark

chocolate and bitter gin. You, 

gourmand, shaper, maker -


come closer. Hunger hovers over

around and inside. Show me

the sweet sustenance in your eyes.

spiral

She 

curves

and flits

fluently,

a silver specter.

She flickers. She’s been here before.

Her flares unbalance you; fierce static pricks you. Your parched eyes

bug and blink. She does a lithe fly-by, low and stealthy, trailing

        your sightline, a star

shaped from dazzling ancient explosions. She hovers and pulses. 

         Light is now sound is flavor on your tongue is hope that she 

         will not disappear,

which she does, when she sees you seeing her. You have learned 

         about this in school. You remember that geometry 

         can spill her into light you will never be able to see. 

         She’s been here before. You think that means she’ll come back.

Photo by Antonio Janeski

the mason

maintains his wall with

baggage - and broken - words he’s

etched into heartstones

the wall

does not hinder true

wild climbers - intrepid, sure,

silent - up, and up

the ladybug

seems to say: watch me -

stones are not storms - bold red queen

bearing luck - and love

the mason, the wall, and the ladybug

span realms: she rests, red,

atop gray stone - when rain comes,

he holds out his hand

Queen of tenth grade geometry

Queen of tenth grade geometry

Queen of tenth grade geometry

Crown atilt, she perches

Lightly, edge of seat -

Pencil sharp, she draws two lines: 

One angle, right and neat.


She won't ever tell us

Why bright eyes go dark.

(Royals must comport themselves 

When calculating arcs).


Might we see a knight there?

Guarding, as she goes - 

Floating down the corridor

And gazing at her toes.


Our solitary sovereign,

Laptop spangled, bright -

Who turns in homework right on time;

Will not go home tonight.

september fire

Queen of tenth grade geometry

Queen of tenth grade geometry

Explicit instructions free him 

from third period biology.

By alphabet, he is posted

behind her copper skin, teenage 

dignity balled in fists. Roll call: 

here, she says - here, he sways. 


The bucket brigade of loud boys 

she will love before Halloween 

shout and break rules. He will

save her. Wrists twitch in

rehearsal: smash glass and

pull. This is not a drill.

d'un certain âge

                             Fine childbearing hips -

he smiled the nice smooth words, he

meant look at them real, round and rich


rich, I thought yes, but for who then, for

bearing of child, then, just the one, hips 

so womanly solid and softly denied now.


Now he meant hips to suit a hungry man - 

hands, mouth said it, eyes meant that sound

between murky moan and low hum, 


hum of the rattly fan that cools at night  

so catch my hips in motion now, watch how

I close the door even with my hands full 


full of all the hours when I meant to say here 

come closer, come see, hours I stood expectant,

ascendant, free, and fine.

hollows

You are sixteen and you are served a single lamb’s heart, satiny 

and lustrous, arranged on a silver tray like supper for the sick. 


You snap on safety-blue gloves, press the empty chambers,

take up the knife, wonder at how your smooth slicing 


satisfies. You record your observations: size of a fist, whitish, 

resilient. You use your blue fingers to trace bloodpaths


that warmed its undead softness. You’ve known them: carelessly

alive, white hearts yet red, filling and emptying. You wonder: 


how long since this pith was full inside its frame, unwitting 

and loose, its thick hollows swelling, resting and flushing?


You lay down your knife beside the abandoned chambers. 

Metal rings. Meager air disperses. All sense disheartens.

perfect possibility

one clean floor, one last rock

one plate to put away, now

one still moment to know

this firm, final pang

of you, stepping as surely

as I could ever have wished

as my most perfect possibility

to learn and long and fail

in cycles of evening gold

and morning blue-gray

I see you now settled, 

    or searching 

    or troubled

    and choosing

a summer stream, a ridge, a fight

     a love

over and over again, seasons

    of your own turning

to some end presupposed 

as all you can see is yours now

as you were never forever mine

the oracle's Daughter

After William Stafford, “COMING BACK”


My father, for a living, saw into people’s souls.

What I see is more like shell-game sharpness.

I signed on to his tenderness but not

the oracle-ness, the soothing-saying of his:

“you are beautiful and whole.”


I am wholly beautiful. 

And the soothing oracle saying - this 

tenderness I did not co-sign. I

see, sharp shell-like, a game

for living souls. My father saw people.

four haiku

packaging

wrap the mugs with care

she loved them all equally

even the cracked ones


relics

butterflies and birds

in paintings of sad children

live longer than you


you

laughed all the way down

the stairs of our shared castle

just to dance with me


damages

give me a number

in terms of encumbrances

that I will avenge

twenty-two roses

for the University of Utah football team 

and the memory of Ty Jordan and Aaron Lowe  


Bring roses in red boxes, for mother’s arms 

for the bond, for the blood of youth

red as their numbered days, for September 

and December, for young brothers.  


Bring roses for the jump, for the lights, 

for the MUSS, for mili in the end zone -  

thundering through grievous thorns, 

let love bleed. Look up, and out, and roar.  


Bring roses for the champions of sharp sorrow 

for jubilant redress in the bright desert - 

renew pride and wonder for these brothers - 

hold them in favor, for home, for family.  


Bring roses for hardy Utah men, brothers

and coaches and fathers and captains - 

adorn Mesquite arbors, plant vast gardens 

of grief and absence and legacy and joy.   


Bring roses in procession, in tight rows 

horse-drawn and regal, befitting survival - 

let them celebrate with roses in their teeth -  

with laurels of crimson that fade, but never die. 

i picked this for you

She said picked flowers die faster 

and that water isn’t enough - 

that I must let them live in rough 

dirt. She admonished: my aster, 

once purple, would die, disaster 

in my hand and my heart. I lied, 

excused - she mustn’t know I cried 

to grasp my gift of death displeased. 

Dull words - amends - I posed, then seized - 

I quit that ground, unseen, denied. 

how to move past writer's block and write the poem about the moth

how to move past writer's block and write the poem about the moth

how to move past writer's block and write the poem about the moth


You must move to the crumbled curb

where the streetlight is brightest.

Look up at the spiraling swarm -

follow the flight of the one that falls.

vision board: home

how to move past writer's block and write the poem about the moth

how to move past writer's block and write the poem about the moth

There should always be a fireplace

  that knows how I take my coffee

A chair that listens and nods along

I’ll need plenty of paper and pillows, and 

  if possible, a screen door that inspires

  a reluctant front porch swing 

A window over the kitchen sink that 

  tolerates awkward pauses

And a vase of pink roses that 

  doesn’t mind if I wander off

I’d like to have a drawer or two 

  that can stay quiet for a while

A closet big enough for rage

A room for music, beauty, and age

And one small shelf for regret.

it's not enough

how to move past writer's block and write the poem about the moth

it's not enough

rondeau


It’s not enough - a house with air.

Invite the dirt, and leave it there.

   Emancipate the child’s excess  -

   all joyful splotches, every mess

in candy-coated disrepair.


Let tiny palms hold worlds, and tear

apart what they’ve assembled. Rare -

   these sweetest days, without redress.

It’s not enough.


An instant twinkles past, then where

it travels next, we do not dare

   conceive. Inside of our best guess

   we breathe our air, we whisper yes,

for one more footprint on the stair - 

It’s not enough.

Copyright © 2025 Laura Turnbull - Writer - All Rights Reserved.

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