iasi

Monologue

She keeps on looking behind
at the corn fields,
her blue dress follows her skin
as she walks ahead of me
into the wood.

The colour of her ink has now changed
with her
everything reminds me of home.
When she leaves, the house leaves with her,
the noise of the smashed flower pots
wakes the neighbourhood up.

I am not awake:
dream her dreams,
jump out of bed at night to go to the bathroom
and yes! look at the box of chocolates,
shining emptiness,
look in her bag
for treats, for sweets,
for a word, for something
once the talking is done.

She reminds me to close the door
in the dark, tripping over her hollow slipper
yes! I suppose
the only surprise in solitude is death.

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Photo: John Stadnicki

News

Everyone said I was
looking in the opposite direction
when the car hit me.

The sun was very tall
at the beginning of the longest day,
the birds kept flying above the spilt blood on the pavement.

The crowd gathered around,
covered me with a blanket,
put a coin on my eyelid.

The traffic stopped. The sandwich maker over the road
made the sign of the cross in the air
and came closer to watch
the phone still ringing inside
the white pocket of my white dress.

The unreturned call echoed in heaven
for a long while.

A week later, news got to you
about the girl’s body found by the railway station
in a silver box.

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Photo: John Stadnicki

The Sudden Closure

What is a heart, when all the world is dead?
The sound of letters dropped
will not revert the time.
And what’s a line without a drop of ink,
when all of us have reached the closed horizon?

I do not see my own hands, in mud,
as I am neatly seated in abyss,
nor I can talk about the summer days
(they’ve never been arranged or bricked
in any way).

What is my eye without the face I knew
(reflected on the path), if not the shadow
of a burn in your shirt.

And Dante, arh the liar him, what would he be today,
without the greatness of the sacred cloth,
if nobody had thought,
before the word, to reinvent inferno
in simple fragments of repeated hours?

The longer days make now the clouds look longer,
the thunder keeps the burning town awake,
and us,
immortals on the porch,
define the only emptiness which cannot live in books.
The sudden closure of my tiny palms.

Duel

I do not happen to know
the purpose of our war
but I’m working hard to
remember the words you
scribbled on the piece of paper
which set fire to the entire land.

Then I could not catch
the imagined rain on the glass roof
nor the light of the earth
so
the battle just happened.

Out of the blue, both of us
ready, awake,
on the horse’s back,
measured with precision
the distance between
the polished guns.

The bullets hit my left arm,
my knee,
hit open my skull;
the flesh exploded in thousands of pieces,
covered the yellow sky
with hair and skin.

At the end,
the music kept playing again,
you followed the clear road,
I followed you:
nothing more than a perfect, unfinished poem.

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On the Ropes

My face is unblemished, up on the washing line.
Perfectly balanced, I gaze at
the small city with big eyes.
I try not to forget you although
I am asleep and barely remember your name.

My existence grows very still:
my feet have roots in a cloud,
the wind does not wind,
the rain does not rain,
the stone stays in the same place, inside
where my heart was.

The perfectly knotted ropes hold my weight
for a long time
until you
unexpectedly knock on my chest
reflected by sun.

You enter my body slamming the door;
my hands keep holding
your unsteady eyelash.
The heavy air breaks my back
as I fall.
The sky is all yours now.

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Ink on paper: Maria Butunoi

Cubes and Other Lessons (V)

For a while you kept feeding me
ink pots instead of water.
My mouth locked in a bud
could only touch black fruit
and blue.
The language came afterwards
to check my vital signs;
my weak pulse made the world see
I existed at last
in words:
unspoilt spring, not creature, not flower, not cloud.
Stone.
But when you stopped,
I vanished.

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Photo: Maria Butunoi

Yellow

My mother used to say that
the yellow marks on my face
reflected the sun.
Sometimes she asked me to
sit still on the cold stone
just to prove that point.
I would refuse to see, eat,
for a day or two,
just to prove mine.
I would, instead, run to the river,
orphan but free.

The world stayed locked,
barely watching the colours through
a yellow window
until the day when
in a careless moment of joy
the poetry gave birth to me
under the candle light.

Yellow, ferocious birds escaped into the wild.
Flying away, small parts of my body.

Nobody-could-recognise-me-anymore.
I was new, alone with the sun,
big yellow eyes.

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Thought

I will say it again,
with the risk of repeating myself:
the poet does not exist really,
do not wait for him, do not.

The words themselves, not the tears, will choose to
get out in the world and
find you.

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Photo: Maria Butunoi

The Chairs

We have become so good at
talking about the weather
when we don’t speak at all.

Not a moment of silence can pass
between us
without me reminding you
how you left the white empty chairs outside.

Look, it rained on them
for weeks and weeks,
we have nowhere to sit and rest now.

We walk on the frozen cement with bare feet
and listen:
the rust peels off in the sun,
our skin peels off
to reveal the true colour of our bones.

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Ink: Maria Butunoi

Revenge

I kicked a dog in the teeth.
The dog turned and
Bit my lip.
The gushing blood stained my words.
I am now silent.