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Laure Anne Bosselaar
Page 2
SWALLOWING
Swallow
that,
the mother orders, swallow
that
now. Child
begging don’t
leave again, don’t go.
And the mother: Swallow
that.
The child does. Good child, obedient one.
Learns ways to swallow better by counting
tiles on the bathroom wall until the sobs
shrivel. Imagines a body pushed from a building:
whose body, how that body, how long and loud
it would fall. Pictures
mother and child
— their bodies,
theirs together makes
the swallowing easier —
how long and loud then the sirens and bells.
In church, the mother’s clench on the growing
child’s shoulder: Sing,
child. Sing
louder.
And the child does. Becomes good at it.
Bellows hymns, swallows more, steals
torch songs from stores —
ain’t no sunshine when you’re gone —
blasts them on the radio, earphones deafening in subways,
streets, alone in bed — and she’s deaf now to sirens, bells,
and phones ringing, voices
begging don’t
leave me
again, don’t
go —
deaf to all calls.
The heart swallowing, parched, dumb.
Man at the MOMA
Whose name will be on his lips when he
dies? Whose body (weight, skin, fervors of it)
will he remember? Who was his first
ugliness? What his first treason?
He won’t stop walking, doesn’t look at
anything, wanders from room to escalator,
hall to other space — for an hour now —
carrying that plastic bag, a thick hardcover
askew in it. Why do I follow him? What
makes me do that, so often, in streets or
subways even, getting off before my stop
to follow a man, woman, couple?
Yesterday, on a park bench, I listened
long to the plucked, hushed vowels of two
women — who spoke a language I didn’t
understand — their voices so drained I felt
hatred for something I couldn’t name — and
still can’t. It isn’t life or fate or
—
But this man today, with his knitted
scarf and old polished shoes in this insufferably
civilized place — it’s Larry I see, Larry
Levis: his casual gestures, that staring-beyond
schism in his gaze, the head always tilted back or
away too much. I would have stalked
him too from subway to street, bench to bus,
wanting answers then turning away.
What else can I do but turn away
as I did from my own first ugliness:
hiding my face in my arm to
stop seeing Hannah’s gaze — we were only six
and I was already evil. I can’t forget her,
Hannah the hare-lip.
How horror stalks us — as desire does,
or love. Or hunger.
What answers do I want from this man
lost in a Museum?
Whose name will be on my lips when I die?
NIGHT
Lights go off, one by one, in buildings across the street. There’s something solemn about this — the lone drone of cars and cabs an urban lullaby to shut windows. Pull the sheet over this day, subway driver, torah reader, birthday girl, pimp. Pull the sheet, soldier’s mother, corpse dresser, drunk man’s bride.
Sleep my daughter. Sleep my son,
and sleep Jeremiah Smith: the newborn
he delivered in a charity
ward today. Sleep.
Wrap a wing around the
orphan,
the hungry woman, the caged man.
Shut your eyes, face your walls, the scythe’s
blade is tilting toward the earth — so
sleep for the one who knows horror,
or the one who dares speak in any god’s name.
Don’t listen to the clockmaker: he’s setting
the alarm. Sleep until it rings — sleep
toward the waking and the windowless night.
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