Mercedes Lawry
Mercedes Lawry’s most recent book is Vestiges from Kelsay Books. She’s published three chapbooks and poems in journals such as Nimrod and Alaska Quarterly Review. Her book Small Measures is forthcoming from ELJ Editions, Ltd. in 2024. She’s also published short fiction and stories and poems for children.
2024 Jack Straw Alumni Poetry Series:
“I have always loved Mercedes Lawry’s poetry, and there are so many vivid and intense moments in this new collection of poems. I keep going back to certain images (‘My own hand, palm up, like an empty saucer’) as I reflect on her startling and exquisite use of language. This is an inventive and haunting collection that explores human loss and loneliness in the not-always-safe shelter of the natural world.”
–Tina Nunnally
The Lyric and the Lie
In every language, the story begins here.
We play multiple characters,
our voices high and low. Our blue tears
carve a river on which we travel deep
into a makeshift forest rimmed
with the haughty calls of birds.
We sleep between the pages, dissolving
time and distance, storm and lament.
