There is an interest in Europe for contemporary literature, music andart

Anne Blonstein

Anne Blonstein is English and lives in Basel.

adorning

the girls in one amsterdam orphanage
that is now the city's historical museum
attached white bonnets to their heads
with wide metal bands

shortened bodies
tautened

how do to it
without metaphor

though they remind me of
the contraptions attached to the heads of those
condemned to die in an electric chair
chart the distance between charity and charges

shaking
bodily torments

when she wears a hat
she can bear the label of elegance
but when she takes it off
she is shorn of a pattern to position

diminishing

what she liked about nouakchott :
the absence of street signs

atlantic-drifting
reactions

suddenly it seems
as if the purpose of it all
is to become environment

the unwanted black swans in the thunersee
— australian immigrants —
may nest in this poem

alien-desiring
readership

the heart acting on itself
will slip away like the moon tonight
into the colouring of its shadows
exchange a bloodredness for some very dark grey

enveloping

"love your viruses" he said to me

the shoulds readhere incompletely

one can turn words like one turns a wrist
to read the time

because when mouths fuse like membranes the pasts
move in both directions

the shrouds refold indeed

they've sewn their skin together
with a thread too smoke-like to
break stapled it with a refusal
to admit to a fear of stainless steel

invigorating

if a mongrel dog goes to sleep
in the bole of an ancient oak tree
perhaps it will dream about
green sheep

à deux
rives

Drink a preposition
Which brings me nearer
To my present location

"lake & mist & snow / train & tree & stone /
today the lake is like a sea : / wave & surf & grey-
blue these simple words . . ."

à désir rhythmique

at five in the morning
woken from her sleep by a beat
that was faster than her heart
but wanted to damage the night so gently

provisioning

if you were to fill
one tea glass with rice
and another
with still clean water

accuracy demands
retarding     accelerating
distraction ratios

this society wants to
protect itself
from everything

and if you placed them     on
the golden balance     of the future
in a house that might be
hit     by a rocket

after discharge
refractory apprehension
disaggregates repair

she refuses to prepare     a
small plastic case containing     water     chocolate     medicines
for her heart     because it would
wear out     continually reminded of     death by earthquake