6TH FLOOR STUDIO ON 7TH AVE by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

6Th Floor Studio On 7Th Ave

by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

hush · issue 5

A prose poem titled 6th Floor Studio on 7th Ave by Laure-Anne Bosselaar. Text reads: Her long turquoise nails click on the keyboard. He goes out for a beer. Her short story spins out of control, but she keeps the clicking going, & six beers later darkness enters the room. He does too. Something keeps him from sobbing with his face in her neck, so he just goes to bed. / Outside, a hard hail rattles the darkness. People come out of the buildings: Did you expect that sleet? they say. That's not sleet, that's hail, some answer. / One street North from there, in Our Lady of Pity's steeple, the tape-recorder's tape suddenly breaks. It stops playing the pealing church bells at six & noon & six & midnight, & the reel spins madly up there, day & night: Slip-slip-sshlip. Slip-slip-sshlip. Day & night. / People lean out their windows: What's with the bells? We can't hear them they ask. So? What about them? some shrug. / But she just keeps on typing. Day by day her nails shorten. One November evening, he puts his face in her neck: I'm going for a beer, he sobs. She types: & that evening too, he went out for a beer without her. Then, with her index only: The End. / for Robert Lopez

Laure-Anne Bosselaar

Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, Small Gods of Grief, winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize, and of A New Hunger, selected as a Notable Book by the ALA. Her latest collection is entitled These Many Rooms. She taught at Sarah Lawrence College, and UCSB. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and of the James Dickey Poetry Prize for 2020, she edited five anthologies, and served as Santa Barbara’s Poet Laureate (2019–2021).