Laura Stott is the author of two collections of poetry, Blue Nude Migration (Lynx House Press, 2020) and In the Museum of Coming and Going (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2014). Her poems have also been published in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Bellingham Review, The Rupture, Western Humanities Review, Sugar House Review, Copper Nickel, Barrow Street, Adirondack Review, and Kettle Blue Review as well as other journals and anthologies. Laura was raised in Draper, Utah. She holds an MFA from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers at Eastern Washington University and a BA in English Literature from Brigham Young University. She is an Instructor of English at Weber State University in Ogden. After some time in Los Angeles and a decade of summers working in Alaska, she now lives with her husband and daughters in northern Utah.
Laura is very interested in combining poetry at any opportunity with other art forms and the sciences. She loves playing with surrealism in her own work and is also deeply rooted in the natural world. She sees her own poetry as straddling a line, keeping one foot in this world and one foot somewhere else.
Works
Monster
Monster
Spider webs by the backdoor funnel into
a black cave, a silk and nocturnal universe
where a fanged creature waits
for the moon’s threaded children—
a moth, a marbled wasp—
to crawl gently into the tangle
of reflection.
Mother spider wraps her eight legs lovingly
around all her young and whispers,
this is the earth
you are waiting to be born into—
dream of the wings you’ll eat,
and kingdoms between roses.
-Published in Copper Nickel 21 (2015)
The Bear’s Claw
The Bear’s Claw
You're downtown in an unnamed city. If you step out of your body
and look around, you can see it, the bear,
next to the creek that winds through a shopping mall,
trout swimming above the glitter of nickels and pennies.
Wishes from pockets and purses, gifts for gods.
There's the bear, fishing one out, a trout. He's ripping it apart
on the concrete. World peace, a daughter
to come home, a cruise in the Caribbean,
I wish she would say Yes.
Once, in the middle of the night,
the bear was on the lawn. Alaska.
I was up with a restless baby only calmed
by cold air. It was starting
to get light, but it was only 2am.
The kind of light only the north brings
and mist from the ocean. I sang that hymn,
a lullaby, and she fell asleep against my body,
my back to the house, my face to the bear,
trying to see it in the growing dream,
slowly taking shape in the dying night.
Which foot to put in front of the other,
which threshold to turn to, the door left open
behind me. The wild lapping
against the shore in front.
A child sleeping heavy against my heart.
-Published in The Rupture, Issue 104, August 2019
The girl with no hands
The girl with no hands
stole a silver pear
from his majesty’s orchard.
And the gardener saw it, believed
she was an angel.
The way she tilted her head back
and stretched her neck to the sky,
to eat. Her hair hung like silk curtains.
And in the moonlight,
how could he not
fall in love with her?
How could he betray this love
and tell this secret
with the time to count each fruit?
Each destined
for their numbering.
It was a story the gardener couldn’t
explain, but had to account for.
So, the gardener and the King waited
in hiding for the maiden
and when she appeared, hunger
was in the girl’s every step.
They dared not speak,
but watched her, as moths lightly played
around their faces.
Are you of this world?
If I am a dream, then I am a dove.
Be my queen, I will make you hands,
and the gardener wept, and the king
kept what was never his to keep.
-In The Museum of Coming and Going (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2014)
The Fall
The Fall
I ate the apples you’ve become famous for.
I didn’t eat the huckleberries,
I was too late for that.
I did eat the branches, the stems,
the shriveled worms inside them.
If you believe me, I did this.
If you would believe me,
I ate more than the flesh of the apples.
I ate the core,
and the seeds because I am immune.
I ate thorns in the woods,
scraped off their skin with my teeth
and sucked until they grew dull
and swallowed.
Yesterday, I ate the wheat.
If you believe I would, I picked and ground the wheat myself,
dusted the flour into my green bowl,
baked and ate it for dinner.
I ate the ashes because I cooked them to black
as night,
and then ate the stars.
Except for the poisonous ones,
which I planted,
concealing their bright flesh in yours.
-In the Museum of Coming and Going (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2014)
Bibliography
- Blue Nude Migration, Spokane, WA: Lynx House Press, 2020. Print.
- In the Museum of Coming and Going, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI: New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2014. Print.
