Ioana Crăciunescu

A Sorry Way to Win

Doctor, it hurts to get away from myself

the alien feeling of breathing the purple air

in the ward, above me the liquefaction of the word.

I’ve bribed watchfulness away and I return a victor.

The syringe.  Doctor, it hurts me, my sorry way

to win.

Nightmares stream toward the showers.

The dry odor of sleeping pills makes me gag

(gasping for everything that I don’t know

will take place).

I run wild, getting friendly with the law,

I turn wicked, staked out by my own self and the world’s

wary proof-readers.

Under a sky boggy with stars I hear the clatter of dice

like the patter of drops of blood dripping from

a rooster’s neck into a basin.

Death touches me, goes by.

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Sergiu Celac

Domestic Landscape

A man caresses his woman barely clothed

by love’s smile.

The pair are veiled in ignorance.  Their imagined nakedness

enlightens me.

. . . a smile like a green blade of grass

darting out between the teeth.

Windows, doors of camphor . . . I get up slowly and go

from the room.

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Sergiu Celac

Carefree Games

Flea markets (snow and rain

never fetch the same price).

And we

getting older by the day.

Rugs wet with vinegar, fingers stained with iodine,

explosions in the real world (an X-ray of summer

fixed on clips) and we playing carefree games

like white butterflies above the clover.

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Sergiu Celac

Landscape with Geese

A field flocked with geese, a country fair,

pigeon droppings on the postman’s cap.

Old women under the yoke of boredom

out in the yard beating walnuts from the tree.

Thick clouds over town, indolence in its lap

(mild terror, vainglorious sounds of life)

chickens dangling from belts, blunt fingers of the midwife. . .

At the inn, the leathery scent of girls without a boyfriend

Like the wallets of debtors with nothing to lend.

. . . A field flocked with geese, a country fair,

insomnia and nightmares beneath the pillow of my hair. . .

                                                                        translated by

                                                                        Adam J. Sorkin and Sergiu Celac

Other Keyboards

(He’s out of his senses if he thinks

he’ll soon see the slightest trace of it on this face!)

A rebellions angel has mixed up all the keyboards

My body is totally on fire. . .

In the salt pit of a teardrop we made love, entwined

within a bead of sweat; the blind iguanas of his hands

scurried across rings of fire, taming.

                                                translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Sergiu Celac