About the Poems - LB
About the Poems
by Laine Ballard All of these poems I wrote while falling in love with a Dutch boy named Rah, who loves goldfish and psychoanalysis and talks poetry in her sleep. “∝” is a mathematical symbol that reads “is proportional to” and for me is interstice and interconnectedness. Sometimes to pause or play there, to create space, potential. Other times, to make a break there, to heal from false dichotomy. A friend I used to wait tables with at a small café in Atlanta, a gay guy, once referred to my friends and I as “lebetians.” Phonetically it sounds akin to Martians, which is part of it. Years later, I tried to spell the word and put it in a poem. It struck me that I did feel as strange as a chameleon or as reviled as a snake; I did feel that different.