poetry

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

Research Sample #4731

Photograph © Saul Leiter

 

Dreamed we were eating

pasta with mud and no-one

complained that earth lacked

seasoning. Yes, thank you,

since you ask, I will have

another portion of this.

At present it makes life

bearable.

 

© Maria Stadnicka, June 2020

Overture

Photo: © JStadnicki, June 2020

Curtains go up on a scene

whose rear walls are shaking;

stagehands clear the background.

Spotlights on at the cast’s entrance.

 

I am your memory, he says,

and the back rows answer

with cheers and whistles. Heat

rises from our seats to the LEDs’

green flicker on the ceiling.

 

Breath-monologue, breath-monologue:

the script unravels, lines break

interrupted by adverts for bleach,

toothpaste, locally sourced colours.

 

The show flows until the speed

of a camera flash sets off a fire alarm.

Curtains down for emergency exit.

 

We push against tar-water dams,

open floodgates then move

to the front seats for a better view.

The theatre holds the roof up.

 

Every moment of terror begins like this.

It matches our lives so well,

It is us performing onstage.

 

© Maria Stadnicka, June 2020

Gallery

Black Talks

© Maria Stadnicka, June 2020

Photography: © John Stadnicki

Fruit Season

Gloucestershire, Midlands, UK / May 2020

I figure out that if you live by water and feel hungry, it takes an afternoon of chewing yesterday’s leftovers to feel mud on your tongue. And if a passer-by gives you a bad apple, you ought to be thankful, appreciate what you’ve got, watching others dying of starvation. But when you hear that the well-wisher was God, which happened to be running late for a meeting in the nearby mansion, you wish you had spat the rotting fruit back at Him. God could have done better. By then it is too late. The meeting He was rushing to would be running on and on for years. For as long as your lifetime.

© Maria Stadnicka, May 2020