The Literary Review
Caught in between
A nimble woman filing her nails on the Mineola train,
the curetted skies spilling inside the wide windows,
bodies harboring secrets, standing, sitting, caught up
in screen worlds that fragment reality in tinsel shreds,
luring the retina yet numbing all live cell. The lulling
of the railcar, the musty air, the sandpapery throat of
December scratching the glass, I don’t want to hear
Jamaica is next, get off to an empty apartment reeking
of orange rind and Dottera oil spills, little distractions
that abet a sort of pillage of the self, making room for
swelling voices from afar, pungent in their sting, how
does one tame the language animal dwelling in the throat,
swaddled in coarse tissue, scratching the pores, this poem
in English is but a haunted home, beam bones I have learnt
to chew on my daily commute, something deep inside has
grown hard and now it clamps the chest, limpid gelatin.
- Clara Burghelea
Sharp on the tongue
It’s not always metaphors and laughter, cramming desire
and pouring tenderness, there are these lingering
subtractions
we cannot elude, the discord of the plastic, the saline cloth of
our daily works, thick with small pains, the feverish breath
of cells gone wrong, though each harbors a tinge of you and I,
the unasked questions floating around like deflated balloons.
How can this unribbed love fit such tiny bed, stretch its doubts,
clog pores and breath alike, best to have music to sweeten sadness
and a smile to fill up the iPhone screens, don’t be facile, this curse
of the simple-minded, better yet, its lure, brimming your lines,
choices, the smile, even. Humankind keeps on gasping without
aim or brain, self-virusing itself and why even bother to hold you?
Out in the lipped-snowed grass, nothing moves. Mole nests
pepper the yard, small murders waiting for the
drizzle to dry up, days to spin free.
- Clara Burghelea
Body as black box
xxx
My nightmares are dreams in my childhood place, a communist two-roomed flat that reeked of fried onion and green apple soap bars stuffed under each piece of clothing, saved for better days as if we could postpone needs, the way we ignored, delayed, overlooked the immediate and last night, you and I were there, my mom had made salată de boef and ciocolata de casă, my dad was witty sober, the house sparkled clean, there was an easy sun peeking through the dusty blue
shades right into our faces. It doesn’t take long for craving to subside, perhaps because I never saw us coming, yet we were on their couch, and you trapped my hand in your own, the room began to shrink, yellow walls cramming the air, ficus leaves shivering, and the baby cancer peaked its tiny head from under the left breast and I placed my other hand on its coin-sized mouth and hushed it into lullaby. On the kitchen linoleum, a litter of kittens, their whiteness, nakedness pierced our ears, and I was wearing my son’s jeans, they fit just fine except the waist extender that scratched a patch of my skin, same as love, becoming, yet hard to inhabit, all little creatures demand for space and eyes to watch over, someone had made plans for us all along, that room of endings faked into a glorious start, yet I keep coming back to weave and unweave
these shards since backwards can be a way into things, may they be unfixed, shifting, porous.
- Clara Burghelea