Lauren K. Carlson

The First Miracle

Tupperware, stoneware, glassware, wood-carved,

porcelain, copper, red-solo, handmade, homemade,

factory-made, store-bought, collected, passed-down,

thrifted. Wasn’t that what the glasses were made for,

for holding? How many things had she put her mouth

around to stay alive? And why did this make the gesture—

how her lover cupped both hands in the freshwater stream

bubbling out of the earth, and offered them to her lips

to drink—why did her lover's hands offered to her mouth

as a container, in whose placement she'd be restored,

feel like the one time she’d known ceaseless thirst?

Lauren K. Carlson is a poet and spiritual director living in Manistee, Michigan. She is the author of Animals I Have Killed (Comstock Review’s Chapbook Prize 2018). Her work has recently appeared in Crab Creek Review, Salamander Magazine, Terrain, The Windhover, and Waxwing. In 2022 she won the Levis Stipend from Friends of Writers for her manuscript in progress. Her writing has been supported by Tin House, Napa Valley Writers Conference and Sewanee Writers Conference. She currently serves as editor for Tinderbox Poetry Journal and holds an MFA in poetry from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

https://www.laurenkcarlson.com/