Cab drivers who know about five English words
but refuse to use them, are speeding in dilapidated Volvos
through a city where amongst thousand-year-old buildings
tourists take pictures of themselves.
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#Prague
#Prague nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2024
My poem #Prague was published in Descant, a magazine edited by students from a university in Texas. It’s part of the 63rd edition of this paper magazine. Even more exciting: they nominated my poem for the 2024 Pushcart Prize.
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Plant Blindness
This morning I woke up in the dark.
With pain in my stomach and the voice of the radio newsreader.
Yet the day felt clean. Birds sang along the railway track.
At Brussels Central Station I saw a beggar with a bloodstained face
who no one seemed to see. I asked if I could help. I couldn’t.
Even though I know all about being invisible.
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Stream
Deep inland we soon
forget the infinity of the sea.
Today I follow rivers
ruthlessly heading for their end
as I carry sorrow like an old backpack
that shaped itself to the curve of my back
and a smile that is not mine.
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What I want to tell my inner child
You are safe now I’m here.
Muscles grown, back straight, fists ready.
No one will harm you.
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Signs of life
After all these years you still don't know
how to live, just like every night you
seem to have forgotten how to fall asleep.
It feels indeed like falling
into the arms of the unknown
that you should have been
familiar with by now.
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3 poems on ONE ART
Good news: an American website just published three of my poems. And not just any site, but ONE ART.
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How a Flemish street found its way to a Nigerian magazine
The Nigerian Libretto Magazine has published my short story Silent Night. The inspiration for this story comes from a street in Rapertingen (Hasselt) where residents put up a lot of Christmas decorations every year. Of course, I took the liberty of creating my own reality. Also, I gave the street a different name, so I can always claim that any similarity with existing facts or persons is purely coincidental.
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Aorta: my poem in an American anthology
The English version of my poem Aorta appears in '(W)holes,' an anthology by The Heartland Society of Women Writers (USA). It is a colorful collection of stories and poems by women writers.
(w)holes is an anthology where women and nonbinary writers consider the wholes that form us and the holes that cause relationships and structures to erode. This anthology explores the theme literally or figuratively in each carefully selected short story, poem, and nonfiction essay.
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The Solitary Man
They mainly come at sundown. They emerge from the shadows of twilight, along with the roe deer and foxes. But while the animals wander quietly over the moors, stopping every few steps to graze or to look around, they set sail directly for the Solitary Man, a massive rock that rises like a peninsula from the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by waves that crash on the jagged fingers of the mainland.
John doesn't know what draws them to this place. Cornwall's coastline has countless rock formations and sheer cliffs. So why this one? Does it have to do with its name, which some say can be traced back to the Celts?
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Leen writes 