Justin Lacour’s poetry is just as much about astute, sharp details as it is about vulnerability.  His poems have a way of connecting seemingly random things to what is immediate and important.  

—Gina Ferrara 

Early dark 

it’s October and a styrofoam tombstone  

has blown from Kenny’s lawn to my own 

all over the state of Louisiana 

sophomores are reading The Crucible 

of which i remember nothing 

except Giles Corey maybe 

who was crushed with heavy stones 

 as if literature was here only to rouse me 

before i too turn into dust 

to write you many times a day 

not the way i would write a letter 

the way i might light a candle 

Oracle 

After Oracle got kicked out of LSU we spent the summer driving forklifts and running to the Kenner post office to return things his mom bought from QVC before we decided to get in shape to jog with garbage bags beneath our sweatshirts like the wrestling kids we’d allow ourselves five cigarettes on Monday four on Tuesday three on Wednesday and so on by Saturday we’d be clean but you know how that goes and in retrospect Oracle’s mom had a drinking problem but he’d never say so instead Oracle said we should be willing to drive long distances for love even unto Norco and Denham Springs across the spillway to the chloroprene plants and refinery flare stacks shooting fire into the night sky talking to girls at truck stops either behind the counter or hanging out by the coffee machine about blockbusters and local prog bands these conversations practice for some later conversation we weren’t ready for yet nothing is ever truly pointless like the time Oracle grabbed the steering wheel from me before i crashed distracted into the guardrail of the twelve mile bridge so i lived and got my chance to be happy which means i’m winning so i’d like to thank Oracle and Cheap Smokes and whoever signed our paychecks the open 24/7s smothered and covered the darkness suggesting there was nowhere else oh i can’t forget those two girls who warned us there was a speed trap up the road and of course Oracle’s mom sitting in bed tipsily buying cubic zirconia from the television people all those afternoons that were so hot and lasted 

Justin Lacour lives in New Orleans and edits Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry. His first full-length collection of poems, A Reading from the Book of Panic, was published by Lavender Ink in 2025.