He plans the memorial exactly one year after she died. The quiet death in Brussels that left him alone. She died while he slept, while the whole city slept: a single tear in the corner of her eye. He tried to collect it in a linen handkerchief before it could evaporate, but what good would that do? She was already part of the air. Better to think ahead, cremate the body, and plan for the memorial service far away. She wanted a lake and a lake she will get: the cold and pristine waters from the Alps in Lake Geneva. Geneva of the expensive lipstick. Geneva of the UN diplomats with security badges and pressed suits. Geneva of the hushed rain where he first met her, that woman who is now being scattered on the lake’s calm surface. For a long time, she does not sink. Her ashes cling to the surface, asking one more question of the current under him.
Scattering the Ashes on Lake Geneva
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“Scattering the Ashes on Lake Geneva” from BONE COUNTRY: by Linda Nemec Foster.
Published by Cornerstone Press 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by Linda Nemec Foster.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Linda Nemec Foster is the author of 14 collections of poetry including The Lake Huron Mermaid (a collaboration with co-author Anne-Marie Oomen and artist Meridith Ridl), Bone Country, The Blue Divide, Amber Necklace from Gdansk, Talking Diamonds, and The Lake Michigan Mermaid, a 2019 Michigan Notable Book (another collaboration with Oomen and Ridl). Her books, The Blue Divide and Bone Country were both nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has published over 350 poems and prose pieces in such journals as The Georgia Review, Nimrod, North American Review, New American Writing, Witness, Vox Populi, and Best Small Fictions. In 2023, she won first prize in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest sponsored by the Paterson Literary Review. Her book, Bone Country, was honored as a Distinguished Favorite in the NYC’s Big Book Award in Poetry for 2024. Foster was the first Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids and founded the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College. Visit her website at www.lindanemecfoster.com.
Stevens Point, Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
Linda Nemec Foster’s collection of prose poems is a reflection of the world before COVID. All of the pieces are inspired by other parts of the world—Istanbul, Rome, Krakow, Prague, Vienna, Seville—not the familiar landscape of the United States. But, the narrator is definitely not a native of these countries; they are “the other,” “the foreigner,” the American with a distinct Midwest sensibility who is trying to make sense of a world on the brink of an unforeseen catastrophe. The world as we used to know it.
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