Laura’s Desires

“Radio and film and dream pulse with desire throughout these poems . . . incredible lyricism.”

Laura’s Desires has a lot to teach us about pleasure in public and in private. Poetry, in Henriksen’s hands, becomes a place where the reality of fantasy and dream run wild. Central to her vision is a freedom conditional on the freedom of all. And at the same time, a freedom that is a presence, a present, an instant of intimacy without permanence—as beautiful as a spell we cast together.

“Laura’s Desires,” the eponymous long poem of the forthcoming Laura’s Desires (Nightboat, March 2024) examines bodies and how they gather–in subway cars and movie theaters, on camping trips and at living room sex parties. The poem manages to create on the page the same spaces of possibility that I seek at an in-person reading. Encounters between the speaker and lovers, friends, strangers, art, and the natural world provide sustained and fleeting moments.

The book is whip-smart, authentic, grounded and visionary. Henriksen’s attention to each line (“cars, trash bags tripping aimless”) is exemplary – I couldn’t find a dull one. Reading it is the perfect way to spend a full-moon evening.

[B]y turns philosophical and playful, serious and sexy, personal and expansive. Together, they examine how the tributaries of our individual longing can flow toward the goal of collective liberation.