print previewback TALVIKKI ANSEL
Somewhere in Space
[“On foot . . . ]
“On foot
I had to walk through the solar systems,
before I found the first thread of my red dress”
Edith Södergran
cradles her huge cat Totti in the photos
on the borders of her country, the critics
hate her poems, she and her mother
in the Russian dacha in the Finnish town
where she speaks German writes in Swedish,
food supplies cut off, TB,
the townspeople think she’s mad.
Totti in sun, Totti on a chaise lounge
electric fur, paws curled,
the Russians shoot her cat, his
remarkable face-spots, blissed-out gaze
in her arms in all the photos except the first
studio portrait: a child in a plaid dress,
stuffed chaffinch on her arm, wings
spread to the left and right margins.