three micro-poems from Calendars & one long poem from Under the Nile-Green Sky

 

Andreea Iulia Scridon

 

 

 

 

Gatsby gazing over West Egg

 

That little green light

across Facebook Messenger,

 

online. . . .

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine being a tree

 

people cutting their names into your flesh

inside a heart

 

 

 

 

 

The Stars in Florida

 

are like cystic acne

so many of them

and just as human

blinking in

and out

 

 

 

 

 

 

Footprints in the Snow

 

 

I took fairy tales out of the library,

and walked out into the gingerbread.

It leaked into the toe of my boot.

I bought cheese from the deli shop

and wore the clouds’ stars in the cape of my hair.

Alone at home,

I made myself hot chocolate.

As I drank it,

I watched the blue-white wheels

stick themselves to my old pane.

I waited for the snow to stop.

It fell slow and terrible,

The kind of snow that dances

more than it falls.

On a naked branch,

a raven,

run away

from the Tower of London,

smashed an old chestnut open.

They say that ravens live

for a very long time.

 

This was before the moths ate me.

 

The snowflakes swirled

into a eddy,

they quickened!

The door burst open with the wind!

The raven, frightened,

flew away.

I heard sharp trotting:

a tiny carriage drawn

by two ostriches, spurred

by a gigantic moth.

Get in,

he said.

I squeezed myself inside.

 

Let’s go,

I ordered.

But bring a lamp,

I said as an afterthought.

The moth nodded in approval.

We sped down the steps

of my dingy flat,

leaving London behind

in such a blur

that I became queasy.

Stop!,

I cried.

We halted in a lilac forest.

Be careful,

said the moth,

lighting a cigarette.

This place is enchanted.

Whoever enters deep

will never come out again.

 

I nodded absently,

popped an anti-nausea pill.

Soon after,

I fell asleep,

my head resting

on the trunk of a banyan tree,

a sleep so deep

that I did not perceive

the cold moths

eating my clothes off, off, off.

 

Some time ago,

I obstinately refused

to learn to read, only gazed

at pictures of exotic animals,

faded by the golden hour,

on the old steps of my house

in Central Europe.

 

There I was,

before my eyes.

I hid, naked, behind abandoned

cactus pots, my vision

blurred by tears.

Regret

handcuffed my heart.

 

It’s time to turn back,

said the moth,

draping his leather jacket

over my shoulders.

 

I don’t want to go

I don’t want to go I screamed

A kerosene lamp swung in the dark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andreea Iulia Scridon is a poet and translator.  She studied Comparative Literature at King’s College London and Creative Writing at the University of Oxford.  She has a poetry pamphlet, Calendars, forthcoming with Broken Sleep Books and a poetry book, A Romanian Poem, forthcoming with MadHat Press in 2022.  Her debut poetry book in Romanian, Hotare (“Borders”), won second place in a national manuscript contest and is published October 2021.  Andreea Iulia Scridon is online at www.aiscridon.com.

 

 


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