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Editor’s Note: The arts are a significant thread in the fabric of Rockland County. They inspire, enrich, and chronicle our lives. They also play a role in our economic well-being; theater, writing, dance, crafts draw us to spaces. They invite strangers to share in our bounty. They are an indelible contribution. Welcome again, Christine Potter, a poet, to RCBJ.
Laura Zaino: Kisses and Cognitive Dissonance
By Christine Potter
Poets do all sorts of things besides make poetry. Plenty of us teach English or creative writing. I certainly have. I have also cooked—and played tower bells at churches. But Laura Zaino, whose second collection In My Mind I’m Eloquent came out this March, has me beat. Laura is a yoga instructor—six classes a week, mostly at Playful Yogi Space in Nyack. But heavy metal music is an important part of her life, too! She loves the “technicality, the energy, the passion” of metal and has performed it as well as being a fan. She appreciates the different kinds of people she meets at poetry events, metal shows, and in the yoga studio. When you think about it, that makes perfect sense.
Poetry, metal, and yoga: taken together, that’s got to create some form of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance makes for lively poems. Surprise yourself and you’ll surprise others, too. Laura says her ultimate ambition as a poet is to write lines good enough to have a “lasting impact” on people she doesn’t know: “when I’m sitting on my purple couch among my books and I read some lines that stop me, that stop time, and I have to read them again and melt into the moment … that’s what I would love to be doing for others.”
Zaino’s New Year’s poem “winter eulogy” has some of those surprising, moment-melting lines in it. Have a read!
winter eulogy
january busts in with a party entourage
screaming in excitement and throwing promises
then immediately shrinks into the corner
a shy and fickle child driven by id
we want to be good but we’re scared
every square on the calendar is a secret
gift wrapped tight in possibilities
a valentine from a former self
but the collection remains unopened
love unrequited
friendship one-sided
we become comfortable with the cold
flower bulbs hold tight underground
gray blanket sky
streetlamp far into the distance
silhouettes of trees etched into the breathing backdrop
pale pink horizon preparing for glory
little by little the days show more of themselves
crocus shoots part the earth
from In My Mind I’m Eloquent
I admire the way this poem uses personification, which is a tricky thing to do well; it can come off sounding precious very easily. Not here! Zaino brings January in as a party girl at what sounds like a New Year’s Eve bash—except January is quickly subdued by the depths of winter and her own wilder impulses and fears. Nothing precious about that.
Then the poem shifts its justification on the page to the right and gives us a lovely selection of late winter imagery: “silhouettes of trees etched into the breathing backdrop/ pale pink horizon preparing for glory.” Spring, says Laura Zaino, comes after “we become comfortable with the cold.” I like that piece of wisdom!
Zaino comes to us from Staten Island, where she wrote poems even as a little girl. Her high school had a strong English and poetry program—a real community, she says—which set her up for what came next: studying English at the City College of Staten Island and then an MFA in Creative Writing from CCNY. She moved to Rockland County and found herself nurtured by our vibrant poetry scene as she created her first collection, Hindsight Notwithstanding, in 2022. For three years after that, the poems in her new book, In My Mind I’m Eloquent “came pouring out.” She says she and her husband moved here like many other NYC ex-pats because of the need for more apartment space when they had a child. But regular readers of this column know the whole truth: this county is a poetry magnet. It is. Poets simply end up here.
Here’s a fun poem by Zaino based on a line from Edna St. Vincent Millay. It’s a sonnenizio, a form invented by the contemporary poet Kim Addonizio (and you can see why she named it what she did!) Like a sonnet, it has fourteen lines. It starts with one line from another poem and uses a word from it in each of its own lines; here, Laura uses “kiss.” And a sonnenizio ends with a couplet.
Sonnenizio on a Line from Millay
What lips my lips have kissed and where and why–
I have kissed so many lips.
Kissed in the dark/ the light/ the day/ the night. Kissed
indoors/ outdoors, kissed in basements/ parks/ cars/ bars.
I’ve kissed every part of men, of women.
To kiss is to hold a moment, hold it tight against you smiling.
The immaculate universe joins in the kiss, huddles around
two wet mouths/ four lips/ two humans kissing.
Hand touches hair, touches face, fingers kiss fabric.
Bodies press into a kiss of their own.
And then the ending: an opening, the kiss a blessing,
a kiss of life. Brighter colors, deeper songs. Time paused
to trade sorrow for hope. This for every kiss,
Each celestial, singular kiss.
from In My Mind I’m Eloquent
This is an exuberant, joyful poem. I especially love the second stanza’s first line: “to kiss is to hold a moment, hold it tight against you smiling.” That’s solid truth. I like what this poem says about how kisses focus the people kissing and being kissed, even pausing time “to trade sorrow for hope.” We need more kisses! We need even as many kisses as there are in this poem—at least one kiss per line. Millay would approve. Addonizio would approve. Heck, I approve!
Laura Zaino reads—and writes—a lot of poetry. Her favorite poets are W.S. Merwin, Sharon Olds, Billy Collins, and Ellen Bass. She thinks it’s important to read deeply, and write hard. She was just finishing the April thirty poems in thirty days challenge when I interviewed her. She writes pretty much daily anyway.
How about one more: her lovely poem on the color blue, inspired by Robert Hass?
the joy of describing color
after robert has
maybe it’s the color of the sky on a picnic perfect day
fluffy cumulus in a slow motion race
or a turquoise pendant
strange bespeckled chunk of a thing wrapped in ornate silver
what about the blues of a mountain lake
dappled by shade of clouds
it could be forget-me-nots or blueberries
robin’s egg blue or its crayon
how about greek blue, santorini blue
stone buildings dotting the dry mountain
ah, it’s the blue of my son’s eyes, each year
steeling their way towards slate
maybe it’s early morning light giving texture to the darkness
or electric neon 1980s blue with zigzag tiger stripes
it might be opaque sea glass found on a narrow shore
headed to its next life in arts & crafts
or the blue you see in a blue fir tree
hiding behind the green
from In My Mind I’m Eloquent
This poem just keeps getting better as it goes along. I like the slow clouds—but I LOVE the son’s blue eyes, “steeling their way towards slate” and that crazy “electric neon 1980’s blue with zigzag tiger stripes.” I had a dress like that! And the closing image! Every time I write one of these columns, I get jealous at least once, and man, I wish I could write a close as subtle and good as the last couplet in this poem. This is another celebratory piece, and closing it gently as Laura does here is just the right thing to do. It’s a delightful surprise.
Catch up with Laura at the regular Rockland Poets open mics on the third Saturday of every month at The Burger Loft in Nyack from 6:30 to 8:30. She’ll deal you a copy of In My Mind I’m Eloquent if you get in touch with her on Instagram @onlyhappensonce. Big Red Books in Nyack and The Sparkle Bookstore in Sparkill as well as Bunbury’s in Piermont have it. You can find it at the Palisades library. The book’s up on Amazon, too.
As for me, I need a nap. I, too, did the thirty poems in thirty days Poetry Month challenge, along with a few workshops, readings, my usual editing…it’s been a month! I’ll leave you with a poem of mine that Thimble Magazine (an excellent online lit mag) ran a couple of years ago. It’s included in my own new book, Why I Don’t Take Xanax.
Home Renovation Show
Stained wallpaper from the 1930’s—faded green and coral,
lush with blowzy roses and garlands—gets a good laugh
before it’s smashed into dust, fuzz-tone guitars wailing.
Someone jumps feet-first right through it. The oak trim
someone else’s mom teetered on an old stool to lemon oil
is too much wood. Paint it all white. Tear out the absurd
basement toilet her husband visited every morning with
his cigar and newspaper, undisturbed by its lack of walls.
Sledgehammer the black and white tile upstairs, blow out
a bedroom, install white marble and glass. Tell a lie: no one
ever lived here. Or cried herself to sleep. No one shattered
a pitcher of iced tea on the kitchen floor and was instantly
forgiven. No one ever, homework done at last, eased into
the bathtub with curly script on its HOT and COLD faucets.
No one’s nana ever washed her back with a warm cloth
and fragrant, transparent glycerin soap. No one ever died.
See you in June, everybody!
