Photograph: © Maria Stadnicka
From afar,
the poetry,
big fat bottles on a kitchen shelf.
A collection of colourful glasses,
with human hearts
preserved in salted water.
Perspective
poetry
Movement
Photograph ©John Stadnicki 2017
If we want the world to move forward,
we must hold hands. Documenting the pain and the joy,
on the same page,
with water, with fire, with ashes
not with ink.
Freedom means nothing when the healthy and the sick
eat at separate tables.
Even the trees sit together. They know that life is actually simple.
But once people renounced their entitlement,
it will take more than a revolution
to reclaim such a right.
For too long we took the wrong turn.
What kind of world is this if
the madman tells us that
we should be ashamed of ourselves?
©Maria Stadnicka, 2017
Published today in International Times with illustration produced by Nick Victor.
‘…nothing happens…’ this morning in ‘Stride’ magazine
Photograph: ©John Stadnicki
Afternoon by the Sea (from Imperfect available at Yew Tree Press)
Through a window, the word points at a high fence.
Beyond the distant melted sands,
bullets across the sky keep in order
our grey memory –
dust in the old man’s bone.
The promised justice moves further away,
into unlit dampness.
Nothing happens in the past, nor tomorrow.
A whisper grows closer, hungry at bedtime,
dissolved by the sound of
stones and cracked glass under my shoe.
The wooden clocks announce the return ashore
of an empty shipwreck.
©Maria Stadnicka MMXVII, published this morning in ‘Stride’ magazine edited by Rupert M. Loydell
The Chess Game / Jocul de Sah / LitArt
Pentru cititorii in limba romana, saptamana aceasta a sosit cu o surpriza minunata. O pagina de poezie publicata in LitArt publicatie lunara de cultura, tiparita la Tg. Mures, sub egida onorifica a filialei locale a Uniunii Scriitorilor.
Multumiri redactorului-sef Adrian Armand Giurgea si echipei redactionale pentru promovarea valorilor culturale romanesti.
Pentru mine are o semnificatie speciala. 14 ani de cand am publicat ultima oara in Romania. 14 ani lungi, foarte lungi, de absenta si de dor. Editia tiparita este distribuita in Romania si poate fi accesata electronic in format pdf aici:
http://www.litart.ro/fileadmin/template/pdf/litart_iunie_iulie_2017.pdf
For Romanian readers, this week arrives with a beautiful surprise. Nine poems published in LitArt, Tg. Mures, Romania, under the Romanian Writers Association patronage. Gracious thanks to the editor-in-chief Adrian Armand Giurgea as well as the whole editorial team for the great work you are doing in promoting the cultural values of our generation, in Romania and abroad.
This has a particular significance for me, as it marks 14 years since the publication of my last poem written in Romanian. 14 long years.
The magazine is available in print and online, downloadable here:
http://www.litart.ro/fileadmin/template/pdf/litart_iunie_iulie_2017.pdf
Photograph: @Georgiana Calinescu-Barber
‘Plastic’ politics. In ‘International Times’
http://internationaltimes.it/plastic-2/
Illustration by Nick Victor copyright Published in International Times
The local MP came to visit today.
He played with his tie, in the half-empty boiling hot classroom.
Nobody offered him water.
He looked outside at the summery fog and
chewed his nails for an hour or so.
I tried to think of a question.
But all of them were already answered.
He paused and smiled at the camera.
I had a name badge around my neck.
He had nothing.
I sat on a tree-legged small plastic chair.
He sat on a piece of cake.
Hunger
Photo: @John Stadnicki
A great writer said in 1920s that ‘a man did not have to be insane to be sensitive‘, I believe. But there are people who could be wounded by a simple dot and whom a single word could kill. And this, at times, is true about the world itself.
‘Good on Paper’, May, MMXVII, Stroud, by Anna Bailey
International Times and ‘Imperfect’…pre-election dossier, 19th May 2017
The box arrived. The first books now being sent to the British Library. And, in the middle of it, a new poem published this morning in ‘International Times’ – the newspaper of resistance.
‘A Day at the Office’ – pre-election dossier.
Uranium Bullets
I always arrive late for everything.
Stuck in a traffic jam by the docks,
missed Noah’s boat but
survived under water
accidentally trapped between stolen books,
trapped by a word heavier than a stone,
lighter than a feather.
Hidden in the overcrowded wooden train carriage,
radicalised by the anonymity of my blue name-tag,
with a heart growing outside my body.
Each beat painfully visible to the guards
around the Monopoly table.
On the waiting list for ballet lessons,
radicalised by the price of uranium bullets on Mother’s Day
handwriting an apologetic note.
My deep eye silenced.
The familiar solemnity of a world without a face.
Photograph: @John Stadnicki, Bristol MMXVI
Thought
Just before midnight, in the unpreventable moment
my mother woke up to give birth to me,
I jumped out and spilt her blood on the floor.
My first angry poem, scream at the top of my lungs,
in the pale room.
A dormant city blessed the muddy wreath above the cradle
and
asked me to keep the noise down.
Mother went back to bed.
The following day I learnt to
write on white walls with red letters.
