Two Poems by Rickey Laurentiis

Rickey Laurentiis dissects identity and gender in two poems from LARB Quarterly no. 46: “Alien.”

By Rickey LaurentiisOctober 9, 2025

• LARB Lit

• Poetry

This poem is a preview of the LARB Quarterly, no. 46: Alien. Become a member for more fiction, essays, criticism, poetry, and art from this issue—plus the next four issues of the Quarterly in print.

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Communiqué in Brain (Or, Early Universe)

—before diagnosis

The voices came only very early
               only very early in my life in my life
they came they made a swell chorus
               made a swell chorus made a swell chorus
crescendoing (wing) (wing) in my child life life life
I braced I relaxed and so they went they went
               away, now sirens

*

               “I was walking down the street when I thought I saw
my mother looking at my mother she wasn’t mother and that’s
               when it all fell down,” my aunt says (she dead) Rosemary in my head …

*

               Present.

The Three Crazies, two paired wings going fierceful, terrific,

the last two wings strike despair

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Terrotica

You think that Gender is true.

*

               That the only Way thru is you, tho I be like Mist tomorrow.
Other than grammar, the Function of Gender is treatment:
               how to Act; Be so Acted upon; how to Treat; how to Treat them; who Attract;
Tactical decisions; Be so ’Tracted to; the Drama of the Family,
               the Bother of the Mutable Sexed Body, then Categorizing said Bodies,
their latitude among Society, their welcome along Strata, Right
or Wrong voice (hollering, versus the neon shrill of a scream)
               Carnal sentiments, and other Errata. The Soul does care, about the Gender,
               But prefers one’s Character (as in one’s Purpose), which is where I’ve been.
My Soul is Coolly Feminine, and Bending necks of violets in flash wind. 

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Featured image: Master of Claude de France, Folio 13: “Sweet Violet (Viola odorata) with a dragonfly,” from Book of Flower Studies, ca. 1510–15. Purchase, The Cloisters Collection, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, and Rogers Fund, 2019, The Metropolitan Museum of Art ( 2019.197). CC0, metmuseum.org. Accessed October 2, 2025. Image has been cropped.