Monique Lanier Poetry
Monique’s poetry can be described as a reckoning with Stockholm Syndrome and Evangelical Patriarchy. Each poem is an autopsy investigating the power and threat of seduction: the seduction of behaving, the seduction of freedom, the seduction of violence, and the seduction of ultimately disintegrating back into God.
She doesn’t go quietly.
Act Confused: Someone Might Save You
This is a real story so you can do things to it like real bodies.
Substitute carrots for the washing, the kneeling for potatoes,
King Cyrus for your daughter. Maybe you’ll see a ram or an angel.
Maybe get rock star parking. Anything here for anything there.
Walls for ice. Submarines for cornflakes. God points and today
we eat. Tomorrow he’ll have no hands. I should have told you.
The trinity is a trick. What does it matter if it’s one man or three?
A war is a war is a war.
Savior
end this
end this
end to end
this not stop endless
end this fight
end me seized
three days
slipping bruised
five hag hushed
nine thorny mouths
soak up milk
union hand fast
here
here boy here
here silky one
one black hound
here
is
my
neck