Milk

Dorothea Lasky is the author of five full-length collections of poetry: Milk (forthcoming, Wave Books, 2018), Rome (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2014), Thunderbird (Wave Books, 2012), Black Life (Wave Books, 2010), and AWE (Wave Books, 2007). She is also the author of several chapbooks, including: Snakes (Tungsten Press, 2017), Thing (Floating Wolf Quarterly, 2012), Matter: A Picturebook (Argos Books, 2012), The Blue Teratorn (Yes Yes Books, 2012), Poetry is Not a Project (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010), Tourmaline (Transmission Press, 2008), The Hatmaker’s Wife (2006), Art (H_NGM_N Press, 2005), and Alphabets and Portraits (Anchorite Press, 2004). Born in St. Louis in 1978, her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, MAKE magazine, Phoebe, POETRY, Poets & Writers Magazine, The New Yorker, Tin House, The Paris Review, and 6x6, among other places. She is the co-editor of Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry (McSweeney's, 2013) and is a 2013 Bagley Wright Lecturer on Poetry. She holds a doctorate in creativity and education from the University of Pennsylvania, is a graduate of the MFA program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and has been educated at Harvard University and Washington University. She has taught poetry at New York University, Wesleyan University, and Bennington College. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Poetry at Columbia University's School of the Arts and lives in New York City.

• Contentsa fierce and violent openingdo you want to dip the ratghost flight to the moona hospital roomthe start of the free and naturalSave your flowersFloral patternWhy I Hate The InternetThe miscarriageThe book of stars and the universeThe ClogThere is no name yetMilking the rest of itMilk, No 2Love Poem for BathshebaThe ghostThe GhostsThe way we treat themBecome a personMe and youIf you can’t trust the monitorsHot Pink Summer Titty TasselsTwin PeaksOCDKill Marry FuckAt night the snakesThe DreamLittle KingdomThe SchoolSnakesThe MinotaurFuck everyoneThe Secret Life of Mary CrowYou thoughtWinter plumsI feel the heavyIs it a burdenThe Medical InstitutionAgathaPoem for the Moon ManBlue milk

"In her poetry, Dorothea Lasky does the work of naming for us, saying it as is, but in language and music that gets at the visceral and drags it, wet and sticky, to the surface. She takes power back."—Kimberly Ann Priest, NewPages