Oedipal Dreams

Rhonda Sandberg is a Sudbury-based freelance writer and poet.

Evelyn Lau’s second poetry collection is just as riveting and
uninhibited as her first, You Are Not Who You Claim. Lau combines her
explosive, confessional voice with a profound sense of the essential
elements of technique and form. Though laced with pain and disturbing at
times, her poetry radiates subtle control, which is demonstrated in
“Dressing Up”: “a serpent climbs the poles of your lungs to uncoil
into a sob / your brain is dizzy with pills that dissolve / into the
watermelon underflesh of your tongue / every glass reflects the mask
slipping / a thin strand of hair or a smudged mouth / you are beginning
to see your seams / it is autumn and the trees strike live matches
around your home.”

There is a unique quality to Lau’s poetry. The reader is often drawn
into a dreamlike yet lucid state prior to the poem’s shocking
segments, as we see in this excerpt from “Afternoon #1”: “I run my
hands into your hair / you are making me happy and I am / afraid of
killing you here in this afternoon / where the laughter is real / where
the neighborhood children outside shout their games.”

As well, Lau’s ability to use sparse lines works well for the kind of
verse that she creates. “Father”: “you stand cold as a vision /
you leave me / I push you through glass doors in my dreams / through
skylights / my father with the dark face, you appear more handsome / in
dreams than in life, I hold up to you the handle / of a child’s
mirror.” This kind of raw energy makes Lau’s poetry not only an
intriguing exploration but also a source of inspiration.