SMALL GODS OF GRIEF
Poems by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

LETTER TO A FRIEND
A dank dawn. Sodden light
on damp brick. Lilacs rot to rust,
and the crow's nest barren in the oak.

It's you I long for most today,
to sit across this kitchen table, your
awkward legs

comfortable under it for once,
our inner clamors quiet for this while
of conversation--vague as this day.

Imagine the sound of a marble
bouncing down the stone steps of an empty
house, you said, months ago,

and I've been hearing its
resonance since, a desolate din, chilling
as this kitchen where nothing's

lit and everything seeps
with stillness. It took me
all this time to understand why

that sound haunted me so--
now I need you to take it back: it has
no place here, no reason
to bounce in me any longer.
Come soon. Bang your palm against
the door as you always do: too loud,

as if you wanted to scare silence
out of itself, out of a house in which
no one would be there to listen.

____________________

FILTHY SAVIOR

Look at this storm, the idiot:
it pours its heart out here, of all places,
an industrial suburb on a Sunday,

drenches cinder-blocks
and parking lots, wastes its gusts
on smokeless stacks,

not even a trashcan to send
rumbling through streets. And lightning--
forking itself to death to hit

nothing, what a waste. What if
I hadn't been here, lost too? Four a.m,
and I'm driving to nowhere again,

a shirt over my nightgown,
reciting Rimbaud aloud, like an insomniac
idiot--scared to death

by my longing for it, death,
so early in the morning, and driving
until the longing runs on empty.

The windshield wipers can't
keep up with this deluge, and I almost
run over a flapping white
thing in the middle of the street. I step
out, it's a gull, one leg caught in a red
plastic net snared around its neck.

I throw my shirt over the shrieking
thing, take it to the car, search my bag
for something, anything,

find a nail file to saw at the net.
The gull is huge, filthy, shits and pecks.
I slip a sleeve over its head:

you idiot, I'm trying to save you--
hold it down, cut, pull, free the leg,
neck, hold the gull against me,

fighting for its life, its crazed
heart beats against mine. I step out,
open the shirt--and there it goes--

letting the wind pluck it
away, suck it into a cloud and it's
gone--like some vague,

bleak longing--
as the rain lifts and the suburbs
emerge in dirty white light.
_______________