|
Claudia Serea
paper cup city
the dark coffee of mornings in a paper cup city
people stand in line; their loneliness— the loneliness of plastic straws on a shelf
daybreak is a plastic teaspoon in the sky, over paper plates and brown napkins
drinking everyday coffee from paper cups we forget
there is fine China in China and porcelain towns with silver teaspoons daybreaks
some- where
else
a walk
forgotten knife in a street puddle (splinter from the chipped moon) —your smile
with a glove of silence I lift it, carefully, so I don’t cut myself, while
the hours shake their snake heads half-way through city walls, while
every day, reluctantly, you take a walk through my poem
Bucharest (I)
rain falling over Cismigiu, and we are falling through it, embraced,
we drag clouds with us, like wounded animals through a liquid city
here is our street, where walls crumble and suddenly I see your heart:
sparrows come quickly, picking its green, shiny tip, grown through cobblestone
the lost Armada
years later, they’ll find our sunken city, my love, (poisonous treasure of pilgrims)
glass buildings still reflecting musty old movie posters, hanging in Times Square necklaces neon signs oyster nests, seahorses rehearsing The Rockettes Spectacular, shrimp mating in Bryant Park
clouds, like turtle underbellies, passing through windows
wood milled by sailship worms, lost Armada, world broken by winds
years later, they’ll find our signatures on things, my love (undecipherable), our voices, trapped in seashells never listened to and your hand (a seagull) still waving
broken skies above moist dreams, fishnets, dead mud with yellow taxis still swimming
Macy’s backdoors smeared with chalk graffiti
years later, we’ll wash ashore, my love, crumbled human shells
Daffodils’ Street, number 11B
—Tell me again about the princess with a sad smile, like a butterfly caught in a curtain,
tell me again that I remind you of her
tell me again about her small room, round and yellow like a cat’s eye,
where silent wounds open tall as cathedral gates,
where violet spiders bloom and your voice’s echo leaves traces of fingers on walls,
while the room becomes a mute, flickering field,
as the lampman fires up in the street
big nests
of extinct
birds
the ballad of Danny-The-Butcher
Danny-The-Butcher is a tall, strong man, with an outlaw moustache and a pro-wrestler name, he carries his surgical knives in a tiny velvet-lined box, like a flute case
in the back-of-the-house, he sculpts the orange morning in salmon flesh
he makes steaks, cuts to pieces meats and the lives of others, with his huge judging knife:
he advises all to leave, or change
he tells Olga Run away be a supermodel
he tells Mary how beautiful the Acropolis is
he tells Ursula Take a cab, go Somewhere
he tells Viktor Get a better job at The Windows of the World, in a tower that shall fall
one morning the tower fell, carrying Viktor, like a pitched flute note in abyss
that morning, Danny had come earlier to work, cut thirty steaks and they let more blood than usual
standing in the kitchen alone, when he got the news, the blood rose to his ankles, to his knees,
since then he stopped giving life advice, took up playing the flute
the last way
dressed in black, with headscarves like ravens, they come to walk the dead man on his last way
up on the tractor, his coffin, decorated with crying daughters and orange lilies
after the funeral, they rush to sit at the feast at long tables, judging the family’s offering
leaving, they take the bottles of wine, hidden in skirts; the wind pours crows over fields
rain then washes words into forgetfulness: the dead with the dead, the living with the living
Spring on 7th Avenue
Clouds passed by the windows and looked inside at us, the blank walls reported our words, the mailbox read our letters, the gas stove spied on our ciorba,
Voyeurist faucets stared, dripping with curiosity, the antenna ratted to Securitate that we listened to Radio Free Europe
But nothing was like spring in Grozavesti, nothing like your first kiss on the bridge over Dambovita, with the small white carnations and your smile
Spring comes now on 7th Avenue; rushing, untangles memories from Central Park’s hair, with the laughter of a vanished girl quickly walking next to me
Identifying the poets
Bob is a poet: a tall, smiling man, with curly hair— and he is a lawyer, too.
He comes in the morning and drinks coffee, tapping thoughtfully on his laptop elegies for lost stocks.
Another poet, the skinny type, sleeps in the subway, holding love poems in his hand, love poems on yellow papers.
The marketing guy is a poet, too. He named the lipsticks Moondrops Wine Escapade Midnight Mocha.
Mr. Hoffmann
Mr. Hoffmann has a bright green hat and red jacket, has glasses, sits on his small chair playing waltzes on the accordion in the 57th Street station
A little town with steep streets and old buildings with geraniums, scenes from old European movies pour from his waltz to the pavement, to the crowd— and suddenly I miss everything so much
Although I grew up in Romania, not Austria, and I didn’t listen to accordion waltzes, only in French or Italian movies about cities where I’ve never been, still, I miss them
I give him a dollar, longing for cities where I’ve never been.
|