Laura Minor

In Fellini's Nights of Cabiria, the Eponymous Female Lead Survives

I'm holding a napkin, ready to smite a cockroach
dashing across the floor? It wants nothing more
than to go forward, find some fuel and devour life.

I need a meteor to push through
this bloody cup of years,
            not a boil of stairs and doors—

it’s either stay and make a life in Brooklyn
or go find a way in Costa Rica, or another
fertile tract where ex-pats get happier.       

            It doesn't always have to be
leaves in the face, mud in the hair,
crying into an elbow at the edge of a cliff—

I'm saving myself from the heart's autumnal wreckage,
            just as Cabiria does at the end—
the air of decision is                swagger and sway,
            lean and kiss.

I will the wind to dust me off—
walk away from the cliff. I will
the tide below to wad its fists and vanish
            as I amble back to what's left of a life
amid the plum-blossoms of my people. Semi-inflated
with the dignity of survival,                bound for home,
I gratefully punch through another midnight chill—

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Laura Minor won the 2020 John Ciardi Prize for her debut collection, Flowers As Mind Control, forthcoming from BkMk Press in spring/summer 2021. She was a finalist for the 2019 National Poetry Series and nominated for both a 2018 Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets 2018. She won the 2019 International Literary Awards, Rita Dove Poetry Award, chosen by Marilyn Nelson, the 2019 Sassaman Graduate Creative Writing Award, and the 2016 Emerging Writers Spotlight Award, chosen by poet D.A. Powell. She was named in the 2018 article, "10 Acclaimed FSU English Professors That Will Inspire You" by collegemagazine.com. Her poetry is forthcoming or has most recently appeared in The Normal School, North American Review, The Missouri Review, South Carolina Review, Quiddity International Literary Journal, Arc Poetry Magazine, The American Poetry Journal, Berfrois and the 2020 New River's Press Anthology, "Wild Gods: The Ecstatic In Contemporary Poetry and Prose." She was a Teacher’s College Fellow at Columbia University and the recipient of a Sarah Lawrence Poetry Award, chosen by Denise Duhamel, where she also received her MFA. She holds a Ph.D. from Florida State University where she recently resided as Visiting Teaching Faculty. She currently lives off the Appalachian Trail.