Lauren K. Alleyne // Poetry

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When Mom Found My Vibrator

She said nothing. As I entered
the room she was helping me move into,
it sat on the desk, in its secret, ineffectual bag:

a gauntlet, a sharp line drawn,
a stiffness in her spine, a set of jaw.
I said nothing. We continued the work at hand:

Unloading, measuring windows
for blinds, passing things to and fro
– stuffed animals to arrange, books to be shelved.

The sun slipped a little
lower into the horizon’s thin lip,
its orange luster vanishing, losing hold of the sky.

The first stars stepped out,
insistent. Our two shadows, silent mimics
growing longer, the quiet between us buzzing.

Lauren K. Alleyne hails from the twin island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. She is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Cornell University, and is currently the Writing Center Coordinator at the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar. Her work has been published in several journals and anthologies including Gathering Ground, Growing Up Girl, The Belleview Literary Review, The Caribbean Writer, Black Arts Quarterly, among others. She was the 2003 winner of the Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Award in Poetry and she is a Cave Canem fellow. 

Date of Publication: 02 May 2007