Lauren Endicott   

(West Trade Review Prize for Poetry 2022, Honorable Mention)

​Image by Anton H from Pexels                                                                                    

Lauren Endicott is an emerging poet though a lifelong writer and lover of poetry. Her work explores themes of grief, nature, healing, and the mess of being human. She is also a graduate student of social work at Simmons University training to become a licensed psychotherapist. Recently Lauren’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in Dissident Voice and Duck Head Journal. She lives in the Boston area with her spouse and two children.

Mama Snake Love Sound on Vinyl   

I know little 

of snakes but this one is a mother

core of her family braid— the smaller ropes 

all heat-famished quivering like warped 

telephone wires in a blizzard 

despite hours basking here 

now they want Hers— her heat 

her heat’s heat her skin her 

incubator torso the eggshells she made 

weaving their need into the ess 

weft of her and she is unbothered coolly

pinning me in place with twin dice eyes

Sink me, mama 

First with that look

later with worse if I dare reach 

my hand into your devoted tangle 

Tell me

in occipital whispers

what you’ll do if 

I come closer

I won’t— 

but 

tell me again

I want to etch your love sound 

on vinyl then play it back when 

my daughters ask again how much 

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