Verse Wisconsin 108 | Milla van der Have

Two Poems

The coat room

[audio link]

They shed us
like light
over some distant memory

They sow us
and reap us
and never know
we too

need our peace

and seams
like solemn vows.

Instead they make
us come and go
as they please

loose little ends
in otherwise
solid beliefs.

Fisherman's Cabin in Alaska

[audio link]

Russia is neither far
nor cold

a dark rim only
against the edges of the world

it's where the sea directs its gaze
a place of seals

- our next of kin
our daily bread -

it's a heartbeat deep
within the halibut.

Out here we don't believe
in anything much
but ice

slow perimeter
of the mind

and it's enough to know that
by whatever creed

the fish will come.

—Milla van der Have, Utrecht, The Netherlands

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Milla van der Have wrote her first poem at 16, during a physics class. She has been writing poetry and fiction ever since. Milla lives and works in Utrecht, The Netherlands. She has no relationship with Wisconsin yet. Visit her blog.

"These poems are part of a work in progress, called 'Empty Rooms'. Each poem represents a room and therefore I use a lot of different voices. Sometimes the room itself speaks, sometimes a person who uses the room, sometimes, as in the coat room, objects that belong in the room. A special section features rooms (or spaces) connected with mythic or historical characters. The second poem was inspired by a comment Sarah Palin once made about Russia, but it's not her voice speaking, but that of an anonymous Alaska fisherman."