Umbrella
A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose


Rasma Haidri’s

poems and essays have been published in journals such as Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Kalliope, Fine Madness and Fourth Genre, as well as in anthologies, most recently Poem, Revised (Marion Street Press, 2008) and Crossing Cultures (Wadsworth, 2008).

Among other awards, she has received the Southern Women Writers Association's award for creative non-fiction and the Mandy Poetry Prize.

Rasma lives in North Norway where she teaches British and American studies and literature at a sixth form college.


—Back to Poetry Contents—

Lesson on Perspective

I stand fixed at the far left edge,
watching you recede in perfect proportion
to the funnel lines of the gutters
along the brownstone rooftops,

your leaving me as clear
as the lessons on perspective
in the See-To-Draw books
I studied as a child, wondering
who had invented how to do this: See,

the large man is very close
the smaller man is farther away
and the tiny, tiny man (who may now be
turning his head for one last look)

is near the vanishing point.