Liliane Anders is a member of the poetry group, Quatrain, has lived in the Baltimore area since 1997 but in April will be moving to Colorado where she will hopefully retire to just writing. She tells LRR: "In May of 1945 Hitler’s suicide was announced on the first, Berlin fell on the 2nd, and I turned 3 on the 3rd. On the 7th of May in the Champagne city of Reims, France, where I lived with my grandmother, Germany surrendered to the Allies, and VE Day became part of history."
Spring 2012
Table of Contents - Vol. VIII, No. 1
Poetry Fiction Translations Essays Reviews
Liliane Anders
my blue veined hand
apple eaten
a lifetime waited away
white sun
blinding cold
three names
on stones
a leaf here
now
add a little wind
there’s a cow
on the next hill
The mountain looks
gray today
A farmhouse the color of a full moon breathes into the warm evening, its windows glowing honey brown in the last light.
White posts mark the edges of the barnyard. The barn itself, weathered, once stood red, now sits waiting to be moonlit as that orb sails into the branches of an ancient split-leafed maple.
This tree, looking like Botticelli’s three maidens, three graces dancing in a circle, has grown from three trunks, branches entwined, tugged upward by the sun and outward in the spin of Earth’s gravity.
Birds call “safe sleep” to one another, or argue over whose wife is nesting with whom, or perhaps that the accommodations seem less than first rate.
This then, this first true night of spring, with the first kiss of new new new, the first touch of heat to come, promises better, greener days.
Memoir of a three year old: train
beacons and the din din din sound of warning
it is night and our car is crossing a road perhaps
the rhythm and sway slow coming to a squawking halt
pause and now immediately build-up-quick to
a rocking momentum again
the reflection facing me is soft blond
with hair swept high I am not sure that she loves me
she has me seated upon the drop leaf that serves as a
window table for thermos or packed lunch
we are just the two of us
she reaches suddenly pulling us back into the
compartment yellow illuminated
her drawing the shade has shut out our child’s play
of movement and light to listen
male voices in the corridor
Be still her green eyes shiver you must not cry
they can take you away
she searches one hand anxious
through her bag as
our door is dragged in its track
they are tall dressed in dark two or three
my mother hands over her identification
he opens and reads the pause is long
before he finally hands it back and
steps out into the hallway
the door gnashing along it clicks
“Gestapo” her breath tart
she whispers almost hugging me
“bad men bad”
the light continues to be yellow bright
© Liliane Anders
