The winter Clara and I secretly discovered socialism
we had nothing left in the house
that was worth burning.
The frost surrounded the bedroom,
we talked to keep warm
and I suggested to write on the walls.
We used the kitchen knife to sharpen crayons
and kept at it for a couple of hours.
‘All western countries, enemies of the people!
Kill the foreigners!
Kill Ronald Reagan!’
I thought Ro-nald was such a bad name
for a man who never wrote children books,
probably he deserved to die.
My spelling was not very good at that age,
so the room filled with rainbows instead.
Clara and I laughed.
At that point, we felt hungry and I remembered
mother kept the bible covered with cloth
on top of the fridge
so I lifted the shiny red cover, sliced it in very small pieces
and added water and salt.
The feast carried on for a bit.
Clara and I chewed with determination several chapters.
We almost got half way through
when I read: ‘Then there shall be a time of trouble …for
every one that shall be found written in the book.’
And then, in the middle of our small apartment,
the game stopped.
I went back to the wall
and changed the words around.
‘Ro-land, orphan but free’.
Photograph: @John Stadnicki, ‘Piazza’, 2016
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
The other day I had a fall in the bathroom
and cracked two ribs.
I have a black eye and a swollen knee.
Google says I should end up with a persistent cough and
the doctor recommends to avoid
laughter, hic-ups, children, smiling people.
Yesterday, I burnt my left hand with boiling steam,
I cursed and dropped the kettle on the floor,
then smashed the kitchen window with my fist.
Today I am definitely going to die so
I have now set fire to the house
ready to lie in bed wrapped up in wet blankets.
My next door neighbour pops by to say that
winter is about to settle in and
he ran out of tea bags.
Dear local MP, a while ago I vividly remember
writing you a very short note to say ‘fuck it, I quit!’.
I licked the stamp and dropped the envelope
in the box number eighty four, school lane, first left,
by the traffic lights.
I ran back to my flat, unplugged the TV
and read ‘War and Peace’ under the duvet covers.
By the time I got to page seven hundred and twenty I’d realised
the war was not the most important thing in a man’s life.
I started to feel a bit sorry for myself
having nothing to be angry about anymore.
But now, coming to think of it, you gracefully got over the insult
and posted back a signed Christmas card.
It arrived in January but let’s not stop at details.
I kept at my book for over a month.
The French got stuck in Siberia,
the women mourned, the men went back home
as they did in those days.
And then a neat Valentine appeared
hand-delivered by a Romanian postman.
Your concern for my love life brings me to tears.
There is nothing worse than rejected love.
The dreadful day we had feared
arrived at last. Possibly March the first.
At the picket line.
We held hands with the same familiar tenderness
maybe shared the same memories witnessing
the course of events as the revolution unravelled.
With a kind of regret my fist hit
the walls of a prison surrounded by weaved carpets.
With photographs stored in books
different directions awaited.
Never to see each other again.
Maria Stadnicka, ‘Weather Forecast’ – pastel, pencil and ink on paper
I am getting used to passing the time
in the solemn company of my wood beams.
Perhaps weeks, perhaps years
in which I have been witness to the world’s determination to name the unborn,
to possession and
to abandonment,
to preparations coming from planning uncertainty,
and to my own weakness.
I have not become better
although I lit candles and prayed
and I mattered.
I scribbled more question marks on waiting room tables than I gave answers
and
I felt the humility of a man proven wrong when
I hoped I had done enough.
Somehow, each time I rebelled
I ended up cleaning up the wreckage,
packing, unpacking,
forgiving everything
but not myself.
The Severn Bridge
If with one hand you
made me a king, god,
with the other you
brother have taken everything else
in return.
My wide eyes travel alone
towards colour.
They all stare at my crown.
But words do not weep
and nor do you.
We both have wet muddy hands,
under your skin, new silver,
under mine, a whole new town.
The familiar surrounding of yet
another road to Jerusalem
which I follow
as I follow black.
Maria Stadnicka 