“Orange” by Lisa Pasold
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Orange” by Lisa Pasold.
Orange
By Lisa Pasold
The idea of truth, that one bright shine in the window across the street, how it
hit right in my eye when I tried to sleep on the sofa when I was tired
after the tiny surgery
but I am no stoic, as V pointed out, not unkindly, when he set my bag
on the futon bed and said, Youโll be fine here, because the room had no windows
and he was right, I slept so well, it was like dreaming of sleep while being asleep
the word I want for this memory is an adjective like quivering which should not
be uttered too often so as to preserve all its potential, keeping me always breathless
the way I paused on the stairs in Leighton House, just as an elderly English lady
told her friend, The last time I was here, I was terribly upset, I had just been
for a D & C, and her friend made a sound, laughing and commiserating
all our lives, we are waking and surviving, Flaming June, we stand looking
wonderingโdid the model ever grow old, and will we, bright in this dust
I went into Leightonโs bedroom, resolutely plain in all that wonder
sworls in an unpatterned bedspread, the mimicked shape of knees and hips
bunched over, or under, how nothing is done by chance yet everything is.
Copyright ยฉ Lisa Pasold
Lisa Pasold lives in Tio’tia:ke/Montrรฉal. She has six books of fiction and poetry. To develop her book-length works, she has been writing daily poems for two decades; the resulting poems have appeared in places such as Room, Touch the Donkey and New American Writing. She has a new chapbook, Kindnesses, upcoming with Cactus Press in December 2025.
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