7.7.15

Did I date the last post wrong? Sometimes dyslexic tendencies get the better of me, especially with numbers. 

Today's selection is from Laure-Anne Bosselaar, a Belgian-American poet, anthologist, and translator. (She has poems in French and Flemish if you are linguistically equipped). Here is an interview for some more background and color on the author.





Rooms Remembered



I needed, for months after he died, to remember our rooms—
some lit by the trivial, others ample

with an obscurity that comforted us: it hid our own darkness.
So for months, duteous, I remembered:

rooms where friends lingered, rooms with our beds,
with our books, rooms with curtains I sewed

from bright cottons. I remembered tables of laughter,
a chipped bowl in early light, black

branches by a window, bowing toward night, & those rooms,
too, in which we came together

to be away from all. And sometimes from ourselves:
I remembered that, also.

But tonight—as I stand in the doorway to his room
& stare at dusk settled there—

what I remember best is how, to throw my arms around his neck,
I needed to stand on the tip of my toes.




Stillbirth

On a platform, I heard someone call out your name:
No, Laetitia, no.
It wasn’t my train—the doors were closing,
but I rushed in, searching for your face.

But no Laetitia. No.
No one in that car could have been you,
but I rushed in, searching for your face:
no longer an infant. A woman now, blond, thirty-two.

No one in that car could have been you.
Laetitia-Marie was the name I had chosen.
No longer an infant. A woman now, blond, thirty-two:
I sometimes go months without remembering you.

Laetitia-Marie was the name I had chosen:
I was told not to look. Not to get attached—
I sometimes go months without remembering you.
Some griefs bless us that way, not asking much space.

I was told not to look. Not to get attached.
It wasn’t my train—the doors were closing.
Some griefs bless us that way, not asking much space.
On a platform, I heard someone calling your name.