Dorothea Lasky, Milk

Is it a burden to be so perfect

And to have such perfect children

And to have such a perfect marriage

And to look so perfect all the time

And to make every decision perfectly

Cocktails on Thursday with Sammy—perfect

You know your sweater really does look perfect

That mango salad you made—it turned out perfectly

And that car with your shoes

Goddammit that’s perfect

Your dog—perfect

Your computer

Well it works perfectly

My supervisor—he’s perfect

The desk, it looks perfect

All and all the day was perfect

And lovely and still

What did we do

We walked the earth

So perfect! (“IS IT A BURDEN”)

Following her poetry collections AWE (Wave, 2007), Black Life (Wave Books, 2010), Thunderbird (Wave Books, 2012) and Rome (Liverright/W.W. Norton, 2014) [see my review of such here], New York City poet Dorothea Lasky’s latest is Milk (Wave Books, 2018), a collection of smart, deviously funny, dark and savage lyrics, as she writes as part of the poem “Milk No. 2”:

But when you look at me, I can’t lie

Baby, it’s with love

I never knew what it was to be this way

But then again I never let myself be

Cascade of ocean

The beach was lost and dark

The house was dark dark

I went in, I wasn’t scared

It wasn’t the going in the door that struck me

It was the getting out, or even wandering

What’s behind the hidden doors

Can I find a bed there

Can I set up my electronic things

Can I put this machine on

It’s my armor to protect you

I have nothing

You are in a glass house

The fall of it

Orange hearts one after the other

My true love is sleeping

I tell him, don’t rest

I swirl

I find another

Another with the moon

Lasky’s poems are incredibly visceral, long known for being straightforward and fearless, pushing unflinchingly through some rather dark territory. Her poems are constructed as accumulations, with phrases stacked upon another, moving further and further, heading off into directions unknown that managed somehow to exist simultaneously linked and trailing off into some unknown distance; lost, somehow, and yet connected. Part of the rollercoaster thrill of reading her poems is in seeing just where the poem might end up, often a far distance from where it might open. The poems in this collection are centred on domestic concerns, writing of babies and breastfeeding, of loss, loneliness and miscarriages; she writes of solitude and lovers; she writes from some dark places, and being “fucked up,” from poems ranging from the oddly hilarious “WHY I HATE THE INTERNET” and “KILL MARRY FUCK,” to “MILKING THE REST OF IT” and “POEM FOR THE MOON MAN,” that opens:

Have some mercy Dottie

No sex, just milk

Is the only thing I have to show for all my hormones

A little vulnerable, not a jerk

Is what he said about you

I am starting to think I am profoundly fucked up

And the only one who can save me is the one I let go in the

    river so long ago

Death, death, it’s all death