Biography

                            J. Lorraine Brown is the recipient of a Massachusetts Professional Development Grant and a Vermont Studio Center Writer’s Grant and Fellowship. She has studied at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA and at The Frost Place in Franconia, NH. In 2003, she received two honorable mentions in The MacGuffin National Poet Hunt. In 2004, she was a finalist for the James Hearst Poetry Prize and a runner-up in the Milton Kessler Poetry Contest. In 2005, she was a finalist in The Comstock Review Annual Poetry Contest and an Atlanta Review International Merit Award Winner. She won the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Zola Award in 2006. Ted Kooser, United States Poet Laureate 2004-2006, published one of her poems in his nationwide newspaper column sponsored by The Poetry Foundation, American Life in Poetry. She continues to publish in such literary journals as North American Review and Cumberland Poetry Review. Lorraine lives in Mashpee and has just completed her first manuscript of poetry. She is forever grateful to her husband, Vincent.

As if

They fall out of cupboards,

flutter from the pages of my books—

these little notes from you,

the folds held together with tape,

the edges frayed and soft as chamois—

and though I surely know

what they all say by heart,

I read each one aloud

            as if it were a prayer

            as if you had just written it

            as if it were still warm from your hand.

Winner of the 2006 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Zola Award

I would have noticed her anyway:

the easy way she crossed the auditorium

to lean carelessly against the door jamb,

giddy hair incandescent in the bulb’s vulgar glow,

bony feet flat in barely there sandals.

Eyes closed, dreamy, swaying,

lips puckered tight as a drawstring purse,

she pinched the air near her mouth

and took drags from a phantom cigarette,

blowing pale breaths into the wind

till I could almost see the glowing

tip of a Lucky Strike

arcing red against the night.

North American Review2005: James Hearst Poetry Prize Finalist

Sunday

The wonder of Sunday:

Brenda Starr and Prince Valiant and Apartment 3G;

pizza in front of Ed Sullivan, The Toast of the Town.

My mother unpinned her hat,

the one she wore to Sunday mass.

Have you ever had a gnawing

in your stomach? She asked.

A yearning without a name?

The pulse quickened in her throat,

in that soft indentation.

It’s your soul longing for God.

She stabbed the crown with her pin.

I didn’t understand that Sunday

could be a lonely day—

all that blesséd sameness.

Harpur Palate 2004/2005: Milton Kessler Poetry Contest Runner-up

Tintype on the Pond, 1925

Believe it or not,

the old woman said,

and I tried to picture it:

a girl,

the polished white ribs of a roast

tied to her boots with twine,

the twine coated with candle wax

so she could glide

uninterrupted

across the ice—

my mother

skating on bones.

Eclipse 2004; American Life in Poetry: Column 035, selected by US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser