Robert Laidler is an assistant professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, a graduate of the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writing Program, and the author of a poetic libretto, The Fallen Petals of Nameless Flowers, which premiered at Chamber Music Detroit in 2022. Most recently he was a finalist for The 2023 National Poetry Series, and the Adrift Chapbook Contest. His poems can be found in Missouri Review, Ilanot, Driftwood, Oxford, poets.org, and elsewhere.

POETRY

We Were Singing

By ROBERT LAIDLER

not dead but being embalmed; we were singing the whole / time – out of key, nonetheless, but singing