Tag: Leen Raats

Three Poems by Leen Raats

~ ONE ART ~ 5 Comments

Plant blindness

This morning I woke up in the dark.
With pain in my stomach and the voice of the radio newsreader.
Yet the day felt clean. Birds sang along the railway track.

At Brussels Central Station I saw a beggar with a bloodstained face
who no one seemed to see. I asked if I could help. I couldn’t.
Even though I know all about being invisible.

Later, a woman standing in front of me
at the red light fainted, falling into my arms.
She, too, refused my help.

Tonight, in this room where the walls
are creeping up on me
between houseplants on soggy saucers

I wonder how even people
you think you know all too well
look different from day to day.

*

Agoraphobia

I don’t understand loneliness. Maybe that’s the reason
I can’t seem to get rid of it. Like that song
of which you know just one line and not even the title
but that sticks in your head like syrup on children’s hands

the well-intentioned remarks from friends
that I shouldn’t take so personally
the questions nobody asks.

That’s why I hardly sleep these days
spilling coffee as I bump into walls
and side tables, slowing down like an old movie,
faltering.

In the evening, I study the fragile spots
the table lamp casts on my skin.

*

Stream

Deep inland we soon
forget the infinity of the sea.

Today I follow rivers
ruthlessly heading for their end

as I carry sorrow like an old backpack
that shaped itself to the curve of my back
and a smile that is not mine.

I walk until my shadow
touches those of trees
in a strong wind which

from the northeast
never blows my way.

In this land of a thousand hills
I search for a dale.

*

Leen Raats (born in 1984) lives in Belgium. She runs a copywriting business, writing about nature, landscapes, and history. She self-published books in Dutch and won several writing contests in Belgium and the Netherlands. So far, she has published in Europe, the USA, Africa and Asia. Her publications include Pleiades, 34 Orchard, Crannóg, and Rathalla Review. Find out more at leenwrites.com

Memory of an attic room by Leen Raats

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Memory of an attic room

When the music hits
I feel no pain at all.
– Rancid

It’s the music that saved me
on long days underneath the roof window
of a drafty row house on a street
where no one wanted to know me.

At night I dissolved into crowds
like sugar in coffee. Invisible
but everywhere my shadow slipped
along facades, over thresholds where riffs

screamed in the wordless despair
only rockers and poets understand.

Back home I sneaked along the wall
behind which everyone slept, holding my breath
when the stairs creaked, my foot
hovering over a step.

*

Leen Raats (39) is a Belgian writer and freelance copywriter. She self-published a couple of books and won writing competitions, but so far only in Dutch. Her first publication in English will be The Solitary Man, a short story that will appear in the fall issue of 34 Orchard.