poetry

The exhibition TU:PLEI for one more day / 25 July

  • © Antonia Glücksman, 2021
  • © Antonia Glücksman, 2021
  • © Antonia Glücksman, 2021
  • © Zoé Heath, 2021
  • The Loft Space Gallery at Stroud Brewery. Photo: © Antonia Glücksman 2021 Artwork: Zoé Heath, 2021
  • © Antonia Glücksman ‘As You Like It’, 2021
  • © Antonia Glücksman, 2021
  • The Loft Space Gallery at Stroud Brewery. Photo: © Antonia Glücksman 2021
  • The Loft Space Gallery at Stroud Brewery. Photo: © Antonia Glücksman 2021 Artwork: © Andrew Morrison, 2021
  • The Loft Space Gallery at Stroud Brewery. Photo: © Antonia Glücksman 2021 Artwork: © CF Sherrat, 2021 and John Stadnicki
  • The Loft Space Gallery at Stroud Brewery. Photo: © Antonia Glücksman 2021
  • The Loft Space Gallery at Stroud Brewery. Photo: © Antonia Glücksman 2021 Artwork: © Zoé Heath, 2021
  • The Loft Space Gallery at Stroud Brewery. Photo: © Antonia Glücksman 2021 Our well-loved visitor, Forest, trying to keep cool at lunchtime.
  • © Andrew Morrison, 2021
  • © Maria Stadnicka, ‘Buried Gods Metal Prophets’, published by Guillemot Press, 2021
  • © Hannah Mathison, 2021
  • The Loft Space Gallery at Stroud Brewery. Photo: © Antonia Glücksman 2021 Artwork: © Andrew Morrison, 2021
  • The Loft Space Gallery at Stroud Brewery. Photo: © Antonia Glücksman 2021

TU:PLEI, 20-25 July

  • Maria Stadnicka Buried Gods Metal Prophets (Guillemot Press, 2021)
  • © Antonia Glücksman As you Like It, wooden art game
  • © Hannah Mathison, 2021
  • © Andrew Morrison, 2021
  • © Zoé Heath, 2021
  • © John Stadnicki, 2021
  • © Antonia Glücksman, 2021
  • © Andrew Morrison, 2021
  • © Antonia Glücksman, 2021

The exhibition TU : PLEI will be open 20-25 July 2021 at Stroud Brewery, 9am-5pm.

© Maria Stadnicka, 22nd July 2021

Night Life

Illustration © Atlanta Wiggs in International Times, June 2021

Ward 4B

During a heatwave, visitors are 
forbidden beyond the reception desk. 
 
Breathing machines run on batteries
after midnight nurses rush out 
 
on cigarette break. There is 
a sudden drop in humidity         
 
with the scream of a new-born 
dug out of the womb by hand.
 
Outside the hospital, a man walks
between candles like into a forest 
 
delivering flowers to the maternity. 
Alley cats rummage through garbage, 
 
wish him good luck. Staff change shifts
back at depot for deep-cleaning.
 
Summer rainwater washes away 
night traffic blood puddles.

© Maria Stadnicka, June 2021, published in International Times on 26 June 2021.

Tree Chopping

Photography: © MStadnicka, MMXIV ‘Late O’

(after Rainer Maria Rilke)


River bank meadows have
all the time in the world.


Their pulse slows to a teardrop 
before any changes in weather. 


It turns to cement, turns to
salt mixed with root clumps,


for winter seeps through layers
of sunset under glass ceiling.


Our tree chopping season grows 
heavy with chalk, a burial site for


the things we once loved that
have fallen and broken in to pieces. 



© Maria Stadnicka, June 2021, Stroud.

Exodus. Chapter Ten. Paragraph Four.

© JStadnicki, Factory MMXXI, Gloucestershire

I am seven, I have committed a crime and I am going to prison where my brother won’t visit for fear of being locked up as well. My mates say if I stare at the classroom walls Mister Williams can’t read my thoughts; a plaster-god weaved a shield around my body that made me invisible.

Open your Bible at ‘Exodus’ chapter ten, paragraph four, he says.

[…and Moses answered: Oh, God, I am slow of speech…]

I spent so long in the company of my laptop that I am becoming a keyboard. I jump over squares in conversation when real things are the wrong way around. They are so loud it is impossible to miss them even if I can barely see at all. Each shortcut leads to a mistake I had made, to a crime I will commit. 

Press “space bar” to be born.

Press “escape” to swear in emojis.

I bear the weight of a full stop God’s tongue drops on my back. I trusted God to wake me up for school with a packed lunch. At breaktime I hear rumbling and my heartbeat. Mister Williams warned me: when you get upset your heart grows a claw which pokes at the ribcage until you pass out. 

To avoid passing out, I have stolen a girl’s lunchbox. I am a thief who will go to prison and die hungry.

How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?

It gets lighter. I eat my past in small bites and praise the Lord. 

© Maria Stadnicka, April 2021

Hermit Age

When I get lonely, I visit my local tip. Apart from Wednesdays, I am guaranteed to find someone about, willing to help me get rid of a load of stuff which, up to that point, had prevented me from moving on in life. One time I discarded so much of my old junk that back home I noticed the front door sign was gone, and the post box which had my name on it. I got in and a woman I’d never met before was moving about hoovering. She was wearing my shoes.

© Maria Stadnicka January 2021

Furniture Without Memory

© JStadnicki ‘The Wait’ January 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ask about someone lost

in an escape gone wrong /

 

they will point at a place

of returning where things

 

talk themselves out of paper

so loudly it is impossible

 

to miss them even if you can

barely hear at all / peculiar how

 

eternal-now locks everything

indoors / before too long

 

hair grows in old toys

in furniture without memory

 

© Maria Stadnicka, January 2021

 

It Has Snowed,

(for F. M. )

 

after many hospital visits

and the nurse has left a message

that you are now an embryo.

 

Chromosome – parity – sequence:

one, two, four then another snowfall

before your mother and I buy curtains.

 

It is a strange place for snow, our road,

our house and the courtyard with dried herbs

grieving for your lateness. Miracle Grow.

 

In hindsight, if magic existed

it would have been weaponised by now.

Trust science with your heart,

 

grow spare valves, ventricles for all the lies

the world tells you. The biggest deceit is

that your future is set in stone.

 

© Maria Stadnicka, January 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homología

© Maria Stadnicka: ‘In Vitro’, ink on card, 2018

 

 

(fragment)

 

Father they signed me up for research 

and as soon as the paperwork passed 

the Ethics Committee, they asked for

samples of tissue from my left eye. 

 

Sacrifice my vision in the name of science, 

check my womb for blackness but say black

only if you really mean it. Father, we all eat 

pasta with mud and no-one complains that

 

the earth lacks seasoning. Yes, please, I need

another portion of this, sleep-walk 

into the garden, repeat instructions

from qualified staff:  Take a deep breath!

                                    Take a deep breath!

 

                                                          Amen.

 

© Maria Stadnicka, October 2020

Full version published in International Times on 10 October 2020. Available at: http://internationaltimes.it/homologia/.

Geometry

© JStadnicki, Studio MMXIX

 

Nietzsche insists that a person must

find at least one truth before a good

night sleep. A terrible prospect

considering how facts come about,

with their own sets of variables.

 

wind force,

speed in metres per second,

momentum at impact

with a surface, temperature

and friction between molecules

 

Ninety-degree angles do not exist

in real life. Until now science tricked

us into believing in verticality.

Meanwhile it builds a simplified version

of the world, a dummy manual, if you like,

for funding purposes.

 

© Maria Stadnicka, 2020