I sit by the emergency exit
at a neat desk
in the office with
neat plastic flowers.
Freshly baked people buzz
empty in black and white.
A typed frozen password on my screen: bonjours tristesse number eleven.
It keeps snowing in Russian.
A nest arrives.
Hollow roundness.
At my window, a kneeled motionless pigeon
is picking and picking at my praying crumbs.
No other survivors.
Photography: @John Stadnicki, ‘Cimitero Monumentale’ 2016
A peace talk has taken place
today between me and these wounds; the treaty signed
on a scrap of blank paper
with a determination which lasted
for over thirty eight years.
Thirty eight long roads.
Ended quietly in a town with
almost no street lights and yet
I reluctantly said yes
for the sake of another last hour.
I am the best like this
with nothing left
hanging
dried purple tulips
at each door handle.
With no audience
I face the blackness of each line
to learn what remains of reality.
The hope that all could be new
when everything is
already gone.
@Maria Stadnicka
to M. M.
Even without a language
I walk that way
marching towards the watery sun
with anger.
It never rains inside of an egg
so
I choose to deny
the sea born
in my rib cage
and go on
being allowed to hope.
Photo: Maria Stadnicka
All the necessary preparations
were done. This is
what they will say when
the truth will eventually come out.
Although she never arrived
like everyone else
during the visiting hours
she almost made it.
If she had waited for a bit longer
someone, maybe you listening now,
would have noticed
the eventual passing
of such a miracle.
Photo: Maria Butunoi
to Clare B.
Clare didn’t wear
green trousers anymore.
It was a kind of winter
so she decided
other colours were
better suited for her there,
as she sat on the cross.
Her face had lots of
squares and dots and lines on it.
I remember at one point
some glue.
Her face had music.
Clare didn’t say much but
I noticed how she put down
the empty cup
and replied ‘well, good bye then!’.
Her giggle melted in a slice of bread,
flowing over a blank canvas.
Photo: Maria Butunoi
when finally God agreed
to go ahead with the interview
we’d planned ages back
I had no further questions
so I offered him
a ham sandwich instead
Photo: Maria Butunoi
There is no other sign of life here,
only my fingers caught between
the wooden pages of a newspaper.
When everyone else builds
the flat packed cement houses outside,
me and the nurse behind the glass
scrutinise each other, munching dry biscuits
and maybe
saying sorry for the spoilt tea nobody drinks.
Of this I am not yet so sure.
I suppose she checks the pulse,
the nurse with a concrete face
keeps filling in the charts
with the same precision she fills in
the crossword spread open
over my legs.
I do not mind.
I say to her ‘could you please remove the batteries
from the white clock’ the time
does not matter now
what matters, I think she says, is hanging on in there.
Her own watch upside down
hanging on, just about, with her name badge.
I offer her my bed.
I could after all sit in the waiting room
by the door
or make her coffee, I suggest.
But Susan points her finger at that hole,
uncovered wound on my chest.
‘For now, let’s just talk.’
The bare wall is
the last thing I remember and
Susan watching the news.
Photo: John Stadnicki
You see, it can rain with blood drops.
The proof the white shirt I’ve been wearing for the past two days
on my walks through the city.
Now ruined.
I have been saying all along that
someone died there at the top floor
but you keep reading, ask me to
sit down and drink the cup of tea
before it gets cold.
Death is not a matter of your concern, you say,
we have to hope like everyone else
for a better world and
let the justice be done.
Of course, but I
always like the tea very cold,
my hopes interrupt your thought process
as they remind you every day that
growing old means nothing.
I am the same unnecessary love,
making a spectacle of myself,
making a revolution out of silvery-grey ribbons.
In the big void, I keep standing up
with my stained shirt still on
and say no.
Photo: Maria Butunoi
(‘Perhaps this is not a poem…’ C. Milosz)
And because I was made a poet
a lot of blood is spilt
on the neat grass, when I walk.
For fear that I will have
nothing to give back
I collect old books.
My word confesses to its imperfection
with the honesty of a fractured second.
Not that I mind,
not that I have high hopes,
only tall steps.
Because of this self deluded truth,
it happens that waking up in a desert
is not a surprising coincidence,
but a certainty, like a niggling pain in a missing limb.
I am not grateful to sleep facing the wall
but hey! someone needs to show a bit of courage
and say nothing
when nothing is to be said.
And though no one will remember
the poem once written but me,
after all, forgotten things are
the only possessions worth keeping.
Photo: John Stadnicki
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Maria Stadnicka 