Mathieu Ducaroy

Laure-Anne Bosselaar is a native of Belgium and has lived throughout Europe and the United States.  Fluent in four languages, she has worked for Belgian and Luxenbourg radio and television stations, published a collection of French poems, Artemis, and is currently translating contemporary American poetry into French, and Flemish poetry into English.  She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.

     Laure-Anne’s poetry collection, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, is published by BOA Editions.  She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, Kurt Brown, with whom she coedited Night Out: Poems About Hotels, Motels, Restaurants and Bars.

     She is the editor of the following anthologies from Milkweed Editions:

Outsiders: Poems About Rebels, Exiles, and Renegades, which includes poems by Lucille Clifton, Stephen Dobyns, Joy Harjo, Galway Kinnell, Stanley Kunitz, Thomas Lux; and more than 150 others.

Urban Nature: Poems About Wildlife in the City, featuring more than 130 emerging and recognized poets, including Philip Levine, Derek Walcott, Amy Clampitt, Galway Kinnell, Debra Kang Dean and Wendy Mnookin.

     Laure-Anne’s new book of poems, Small Gods of Grief, is due out in September, 2001, as part of the BOA American Poets Continuum Series.
 

Two samples of the poet's work:

 
                 Leek Street
 

        in Bruges, was a cul-de-sac so narrow
cars never scarred its mossy cobblestones.
Every house had a niche above the door
for a Saint, and a little garden framed by high
brick walls.  Carved into the back rampart,
an iron gate opened on the Wool Canal.
        Now and then, a muskrat’s head
pearled out of that green velvet, then slipped
back into the water.  The Belfry rang a bronze
quiver through the drizzle every quarter.

        Yochemke lived at No. 8 in the only house
with open curtains and no Saint.
He was nine, had a large hole in his tongue
and six numbers tattooed on his arm.
They did this to him when he was a baby, he said,
he couldn’t remember if it hurt.
I loved him so much I repeated the numbers
inside his arm every night until I feel asleep:
Yochemke-seven-four-three-two-three-six.
        It rained the day he said I could put
my finger through his tongue.
He shut his pale gray eyes, I shut mine,
and he slowly closed his lips around my finger.
Something guilty and deep made me want to cry.

        We were setting muskrat traps by the canal
the first time he said he loved me.  I wanted
to play the piano for him, or have curly hair
and be beautiful, I was so happy.
     The muskrats were for his father
who made collars and muffs out of them
to sell at the Fish Market.  He always came
back with something for Yochemke.  Once,
it was a glass marble with a heart of green,
blue and gold.  When Yochemke gave it to me,
we were sitting by the canal stirring the algae
with willow sticks.  His father had told him
the heart of the marble was what the world
looked like before the Germans.

        That night, we climbed the Belfry tower
to make the bronze bell ring with the marble.
Up there, looking down at the brown roofs
and fields of the world, we wanted to change it back
to how it was, make it look like the marble again.
        We’d set traps for the Germans, poke
holes in their tongues, hurl their bodies in the canal,
and all the muskrats of Bruges would feed on them,
fatten, we’d trap them, and –
        I’ll buy you a piano, said Yochemke,
        we’ll be the richest muff makers in Belgium.
Then, with our marble, we tapped the bell
as hard as we could and listened to its small sound
float out over the canals.
 

 
         After a Noisy Night
 

        The man I love enters the kitchen
with a groan, he just
woke up, his hair a Rorschach test.
A minty kiss, a hand
on my neck, coffee, two percent milk,
microwave.  He collapses
on a chair, stunned with sleep,
yawns, groans again, complains
about his dry sinuses and crusted nose.
        I want to tell him how
much he slept, how well,
the cacophony of his snoring
pumping in long wheezes
and throttles—the debacle
of rhythm—hours erratic
with staccati of pants and puffs,
crescendi of gulps, chokes,
pectoral sputters and spits.
        But the microwave goes ding!
A short little ding!—sharp enough to stop
my words from killing the moment.
        And during the few seconds
it takes the man I love
to open the microwave, stir,
sip and sit there staring
at his mug, I remember the vows
I made to my pillows, to fate
and God:  I’ll stop eating licorice,
become a blonde, a lumberjack,
a Catholic, anything,
but bring a man to me:
        so I go to him:  Sorry, honey,
sorry you had such a rough night,
hold his gray head against my heart
and kiss him, kiss him.
 

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