POETRY : LOOK AT EVERYTHING & CHILDREN OF ASYLUM SEEKERS / ANNA LAURA REEVE
Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility
Anna Laura Reeve
Belle Point Press
When we received Anna Laura Reeve’s poem, Méniére's Disease a long while back, we knew it was something special. There’s a lived in quality to the imagery, the rhythm, the volume of the piece that quietly demanded our attention.
So it is no surprise that Reeve’s debut collection of poetry–Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility–does just the same. With imagery steeped in her southern upbringing, Reeve cuts herself open and lets everything–motherhood, nature, our crumbling world–all come spilling out.
It’s a wonderful debut and we are excited to feature two of the poems from the book down below. Reeve did us the solid of recording the pieces as well and they are very very worth your time.
Buy Anna Laura Reeve’s collection, Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility.
Look at Everything
by Anna Laura Reeve
Children of Asylum Seekers
by Anna Laura Reeve
LOOK AT EVERYTHING
Springscent lifts on the last day of February.
The complex formations of Lent bunch
to the west, Putin’s war to the east. Grape hyacinth
and purple deadnettle open miniscule lips
with a puh and each efflux is so sweet
bees will find it. On my run this morning,
the rain-swollen stream that hadn’t frozen
overnight released vapor overhead
like a little blindness. Obscurity. Fragrance.
I thought, as I ran, of the Ukrainian teacher
photographed as she taught students sheltering
in a Kyiv subway. How much easier it is
to teach spelling rules or animal life cycles
than to explain murder to a child. Once, I tried
to tell my daughter of a famous assassination
but found myself plummeting, suddenly,
to the foot of the mountain. How does a mother,
father, teacher, or anyone who loves a child,
puncture the seal, allowing safety and death
to taste each others’ breath. It is the difficult work
of the child to observe. It is the work of the teacher
to say Look at everything, then look again at me.
CHILDREN OF ASYLUM SEEKERS
Simple removal of child from parents fleeing fire.
Simple wrapping of woman, mother,
man, father, in wire.
Inside white tents, crèches
of brown children mill,
waiting for the feeling of
recognition to flood their bodies.
All we know of our parents is in the body: I knew
my mother’s breast, because it was there that I turned outward
to see the world. It was my floor.
I knew my father’s chest because for a while
my weakness fit there, like a soft body
under hard wing casings.
