Before Today
Laurinda Lind
Today I read for the second time about
how structuralism’s so hard to understand
because of the French showing off for
the French. But before that, I’d almost
done the whole damn book. Now I’ve
started over with a second copy because I
lost it off the roof of the car when I drove
away. But before that, I had kids who didn’t
care about structuralists and said only
unstructured things they thought needed
saying. But before that I worked in a seed-
packing plant and sat on break in the concrete
restroom with the smokers. I smelled like hell.
But before that the same awful band played
at school dances every week, all versions
of my friend Andy on guitar using different
names and swearing it wasn’t him this time,
but it was. But before that, I stayed all day on
the beach and stared at summer people since
I was a kid with no manners. But before that,
my mother, whose insides were bad and wasn’t
supposed to have babies, hoped I could cure
her and I did. That was my first miracle. I’m still
waiting for more. But before that I was somewhere
else and must have forgotten because I think
you may have been there with the structuralists
and me, but now here we are like this. And
today is a turn of the thread we started then.
Laurinda Lind moved back to northern New York State from the Intermountain West, and teaches college composition after working several years as a freelance journalist. She won second place in this year’s New York State Fair poetry competition. Some publications/ acceptances are in Blue Fifth Review, Comstock Review, The Cortland Review, Deadlights, Ekphrasis, Josephine Quarterly, Main Street Rag, The Moon, Mudfish, Off the Coast, Paterson Literary Review, The Poeming Pigeon, Triggerfish, Unbroken, Welter, and Wildflower Muse.