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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
—Oberon, 2005
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
—Oberon, 2006
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
—Oberon, 2006
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
—Harpur Palate, 2007
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
—Oberon, 2007
| Claudia Serea was born in Romania and
moved to the U.S. in 1995. She works as an art director
and her poems are inspired by New York, Bucharest, and
the landscape and people from both countries. Claudia
Serea’s poems and translations are published in
literary journals such as Oberon, Comstock Review, Harpur
Palate, Respiro, Language and Culture.net, and in various
Romanian publications. Her chapbook, Eternity’s
Orthography, was chosen as a contest finalist and published
in September 2007 by the Finishing Line Press. |
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