Thunderbird

"In lines that remind me of the way William Carlos Williams insisted that only the imagination gives us access to reality, Lasky's poems evoke a practice of living, as bloody and awful and lovely as living can ever be."--Julia Bloch, "Bitch"

"The beautiful thing about Lasky, in all her work, but particularly here, is her ability to create that same sense of earnestness, the sense that she is telling you a secret."--InDigest Magazine, InDigest Picks

Go, brave and gentle reader, with Dorothea Lasky to the "purple motel / where the bird lives." Go with her, as you have willingly gone down the dark passages before, with her bare-faced poems for guidance. "Thunderbird"'s controlled rage plunges into the black interior armed with nothing but guts and Lasky's own fiery heart to light the way.

"Baby of air

You rose into the mystical

Side of things

You could no longer live with us

We put you in a little home

Where they shut and locked the door

And at night

You blew out

And went wandering . . . "

Dorothea Lasky is also the author of "Black Life" and "AWE," both from Wave Books. She lives in New York.