Laure-Anne Bosselaar: When the Bed is Made
How mothers, lovers, nurses & hotel maids,
backs aching, have bent over beds for that last
swift tidying.
Michael Simms: Strangers at the Door | Robert Gibb, Laure-Anne Bosselaar and Jose Padua
Here I want to call attention to three mature poets who have done extraordinary work, but have not, in my opinion, received the attention they deserve, and in the process explore different ways one can be an “outsider” in the poetry field.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: At the end of the Breakwater
Let the day open so wholly
to light.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Tonight’s Dinner Companions
you, old poet, gone, whose lines I often
say aloud against the ocean’s constant shush
Kurt Brown: Fisherman
He’s only felt the shadow
of something enormous darken his life. Or has he?
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Earbug
Ah, it’s back. It hadn’t hummed in my head for years —
that achingly joyful accordion tango.
Wayne Karlin: Because You Are Not Here
Because you are not here
you are always here
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Infinitives
To dust it — not often enough. To stare at it — too often.
To never open it anymore. Keep his ashes hidden.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Dusk
Yet, while time takes its time to steal the light,
another music stirs, as if memory’s notes
had escaped their staff, & the past came to sing
beside me of its ordinary moments
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Lately,
Do you believe at times that a moment chooses
you to remember it entirely & tell about it —
so that it may live again?
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Evening
Gone. Another day gone. Its chest-
shredding tragedies or frivolous whims equally
scavenged by dusk. Soon the wind will rest
in the messy trellis of my tree.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Godwit Beach
Remember? It was late in the afternoon,
we walked a while along these limestone cliffs,
under the silver ghosts of eucalyptus trees.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: After a Night of Rain
So I stop my busy nothingnesses & sit a while
at my good table, by the white bowl
edged golden by the sun.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Complaint About Missing Friends after Ten Months of the Pandemic
Verlaine threw pail after pail after
cold water pail on the gravel under Rimbaud’s
windows, to cool the air as he slept.
