Lauren Yates

Elegy for Apologies I Will Never See

by on Aug 5, 2015

The summer I found my two pet goldfish belly up,
like a fistful of dignity falling to sand, my mother
prayed for the tomatoes. She spoke chaos in tongues,
each convulsion meaning, “red,” “plump,” “juicy.”

That summer’s harvest yielded tomatoes so perfect,
they looked as fake as a virtuoso’s uncalloused fingers.
The hands of someone who takes showers and not baths.

My mother explained our good fortune: “I asked and
the Lord delivered.” She said He blessed us with this fruit
for letting the wall-eyed woman, with a pack of gum
and National Enquirer, cut us in the check-out line.

It was my grandmother who let the truth slip as she
sucked on her dentures. “Your mom buried Lily and
Sunflower with the tomatoes. They sure worked.
This BLT is excellent.”  My mother meant “circle of

life” as a comfort, said we had made lemonade from
lemons. She buried my darlings like a tell-tale heart,
plagiarized an act of god from this domesticated rot.

 

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Lauren Yates is a Pushcart-nominated poet who is currently based in Philadelphia. Her writing has appeared in Nerve, XOJane, FRiGG, Umbrella Factory, Softblow, and Melusine. Lauren is also a poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly and is currently a Poet in Residence with the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel University. For more information, visit laurentyates.com.

Dog Whistle Effect

by on Jul 30, 2015

Over dinner, she asks if I have ever been to Uncle Tom’s Taco Shop. “You mean Honest Tom’s?” It becomes painfully obvious that we are two women—one black, one white—on a date in a “Mexican” restaurant. I look at her pork belly banh mi tacos, my own shrimp tempura tacos with tom yum aioli. This neighborhood used to be affordable.  Now the coffee shops sell vinyl and breakfast sandwiches with names like “The Notorious E.G.G.” Uncle Tom aside, she has asked me if I have been to a restaurant three blocks from my own house, as if I won’t pass it on the bus ride home. She eats her “Vietnamese-Mexican” tacos, calls herself an “activist.” A war cry only I can hear.

 

—
Lauren Yates is a Pushcart-nominated poet who is currently based in Philadelphia. Her writing has appeared in Nerve, XOJane, FRiGG, Umbrella Factory, Softblow, and Melusine. Lauren is also a poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly and is currently a Poet in Residence with the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel University. For more information, visit laurentyates.com.