Daniel Saalfeld’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Hopkins Review, The Southeast Review, The Seattle Review, Cimarron Review, The South Carolina Review, Tar River Poetry, Margie, Poet Lore, and The Pinch. A Fulbright Scholar recipient, he lectured on modern and contemporary American poetry in Russia. He teaches creative writing at the George Washington and the Johns Hopkins Universities.---------
Ballet
Waking from a doze on a white couch,
I see black and white posters of her
leaping on unknown stages with her legs
parallel to the floor and her arms out
as far as they’ll go. It’s another dream
I’ve wanted to wake up in: a dimly lit flat
with white carpet below a red Persian rug,
a Siamese cat named Pushkin
looking at me curiously, December rain
falling outside, and one long muscle,
a fancy fountain pen, having coaxed me
into this state with her Russian yes’s.
Toward Besançon
East toward Besançon I headed with a towel
and toothbrush in my bag. After two hours
of walking, the silence grew louder
as the sky clouded over early spring fields.
Trains travelling by began to mock me;
I wished I hadn’t started so late
to this last city of significance
in the circle I’d drawn around Dijon.
Treads and other car parts made me meditate
on the painting I was coloring myself into.
As I approached a railroad crossing
through which a train had just passed,
an old lady honked, beckoning me
to her old black Citroën
with a white shepherd dog in front.
From the back seat, I gilded thoughts
about her country I was turning into
my terrain of spontaneity. Her car
came to an idle in front of a sign
pointing to my destination. “Bonne chance!”
she said as I got out. It began to mist.
I watched her disappear between grapevines.
A middle-aged man in a new gold Renault
soon stopped and said, “Strasbourg” after I asked,
“À Besançon?” “D’accord, Strasbourg,”
I replied, getting more than I bargained for.
We agreed to struggle with his tongue
as he pointed out the Rhine Valley
the French lost so many lives over
in both World Wars. Near the Our Lady
Cathedral, he asked if I wanted a ride
back on Monday morning. “Non, merci,”
I said, but he gave me his card
if I would change my mind.
On a city bus, I met a meaner character,
a woman, who asked, “Une cigarette monsieur?”
Again, “Une cigarette monsieur?”
And again and again, louder and louder,
until she was spitting and screaming
in my face, “Une cigarette monsieur?”
“Je ne fume pas” would not slow her down
until a man got up and kicked her off,
shouting that she was disturbing his femme.
And then at the train station’s brasserie
while I was eating un sandwich jambon,
awaiting my early-morning train to Dijon,
a man eyed my bag and me intently
until his friend told him to leave me alone,
saying, “He’s hungry—can’t you see?”