The fall/winter issue of Cerise Press is now online with two new poems from Dorianne Laux, among others. My favorite so far is Laux’s “The Cherry Tree.” An excerpt:

The birds are at the cherries, crying
and thrashing, tapping at the tough skins,
bathing in the juice. Their beaks are bright
with wine in this epoch, this season, this year
of the cherry, seeds that traveled by boat
from Asia Minor, rolling in the hull, cold
against the Black Sea, then poured by handfuls
into the soil at Plymouth.

Note to the editors: set yourselves up with an RSS feed so I can add Cerise to Swindle.

Via Sandra B.

In addition to Sarah J. Sloat, we have Dorianne Laux serving as a guest blogger this week. Laux has been a supporter of Linebreak from way back, and we’re delighted to have her contributing this week.

Laux has published four books of poems. The fourth, Facts about the Moon (W.W. Norton), won the Oregon Book Award. Eastern Washington University Press reprinted Awake, her first collection, and Superman: the Chapbook is being brought out by Red Dragonfly Press. Her awards include two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Best American Erotic Poems Prize, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from The NEA, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

After teaching at the University of Oregon in Eugene and Pacific University, Laux recently moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, where she joins the faculty at North Carolina State University. She’s married to poet Joseph Millar.

I was first brought to Laux’s poetry by the poem “Vacation Sex.”  And it’s still one of my favorites.

Read more about her and her work.