Organizing your writing life

MEETING LAURE-ANNE AT LAST: After months of email and messages from mutual friends, I finally met Laure-Anne Bosselaar last night at the Poetry at Tech reading, which also featured Bruce McEver and some lovely new work from fellow Atlanta poet Opal Moore. I could gush on and on about how brilliant Laure-Anne is, but most of you already know that. Love her accent, love her poetry, love her. I have the high honor of reading with her later this month at the Limp Wrist magazine launch on Feb. 28 at Outwrite Books. What a treat. And she's also featuring at Java Monkey Speaks in Decatur on Feb. 17. If you're in Atlanta, don't miss the chance to hear her read. This was one of the poems Laure-Anne read last night from her collection Small Gods of Grief:

Dinner at the Who's Who

amidst swirling wine
and flickers of silver guests quote
Dante, Brecht, Kant and each other.

I wait in the hall after not
powdering my nose, trying to re-
compose that woman who’ll

graciously take her place
at the table and won’t tell her hosts:
I looked into your bedroom

and closets, smelled your
“ Obsession” and “Brut,” sat
on your bed, imagined you

in those spotless sheets, looked
long into the sad eyes of your son
staring at your walls from his frame.

I tried to smile at myself
in your mirrors, wondering if you
smile that way too: those resilient

little smiles one smiles
at one’s self before facing the day,
or another long night ahead —

guests coming for dinner.
So I wait in this hall because
there are nights it’s hard

not to blurt out Stop! Stop
our babble: Pulitzer, Wall Street, sex,
Dante, politics, wars, have some Chianti...

let’s stop and talk. Of our thirsts
and obsessions, our bedrooms
and closets, the brutes in our mirrors,

the eyes of our sons.
There is time yet — let’s talk.
I am starving.