ANNA LIVESEY

Memory of a poem by August Kleinzahler

There were two people (one in a blue dress).
They stood outside the ring the crowd made
around some spectacle
and spoke to each other.
It is not in the poem, but I think she folded her hands
in the skirt of her blue dress,
running the fabric between her fingers.
l think he touched her wrist, bare and white
in the light reflected from the spectacle.
They were behind the backs of several thousand people,
none of whom noticed them. Her wrist
looked very fine as it rose from the blue material.
Seeing the wrist, he was sorry for what he had said.
He said something else to her instead and she replied, quietly.
They made a small crowd of their own.

Anna Livesey’s first book, Good Luck, was published in 2003. Having had a long and happy life as a university student and writer-about-town, she is currently in deep cover as a public servant.

Livesey comments: ‘“Memory of a poem by August Kleinzahler” sprang from an encounter with August Kleinzahler’s most recent book, The Strange Hours Travelers Keep.’

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