the stress clinic
it’s ok no one need know only negligible
impending threat i’m going to leave you
let healing happen
i’m turning left into the coffee shop it’s easy
like this one step
one more
comforting to sit
even on seats slashed by spooks
i can wait learn patience is learnt on the edge
other worlds where others wait
for the breath something that “presents”
a hiatus between one distress and
the nest you’re reluctant to leave
it’s ok the world is out there still the density
you love suspended in space preparing
the next problem for you to solve you’re good
at that talented
are you ok? me too it’s just
the acid sprung on a tensile in my stomach
at ulica Freta, 16 – before radium or polonium
the wood seeps into your bones
in a room that lives as if its grain
& whorls were part of your nervous
system – smooth marrow – polished
in your tea one lump, two meticulous
the molecules contract till they disappear
optical illusions have their own reality
billowing on the balcony Poland
is diluted Prussian Russian
fission renames a people
invents a purpose of its own
but you can shut it out indomitable
in a room that soon is rubble while thunder
splits the summer partitions your
future gladioli everywhere alert
to your black dress alive your luggage
waltzing in the street
(originally published in Can-Can #2)
modern art
you’re slung
rigid
against the wall
boxed in the past
adroit
your mouth apes
bereft of tongue
hoping to emit
a word
a silence, even
something, anything
of the side-tracked route
you had to take
from primitive iron
lodged in some alpine nook
through ism, to prism
to plexiglass
you’re waiting - aren’t you
for me
to gut you
get the warm feel
of your spasm
when I tug
on the spinal cord
and watch you
crumple
to the ground
crimson
refusing to be pressed
Taipei
i wake my arms wrapped
around the city legs enjamb-
ed with its towers
skyward /a formal
composition/
silence /stylized/
flowers through its lights
the smallness of them struck
by shadowed stills
the colour of cavities
of not wanting to disturb /harmony
respect/
28 degrees at midnight slums unshimmering
slumber the eye insists on definition
colour resists /chaos v order/
could hang me
it’s a hollow that isn’t black
but marinated
stinky tofu
where the street light
sizzles
maybe it’s a smell a size
the meaning of a name
i can never forget /beautiful
soup/
corrugated iron angles into place discreet /elegant/
blanketblue & rustroof red
staggered across some great want
where the revolution daubs
its palette of scars
| the stress clinic, at ulica Freta, 16 – before radium or polonium & modern art are © Anamaría Crowe Serrano. Read Jezebel & Taipei (PDF) |
Anamaría Crowe Serrano is a poet and translator born in Ireland to an Irish father and a Spanish mother. She grew up bilingually, straddling cultures, rarely with her nose out of a book. Languages have always fascinated her to the extent that she has never stopped learning or improving her knowledge of them. She enjoys cross-cultural and cross-genre exchanges with artists and poets. Much of her work is the result of such collaborations. With a B.A. (Hons) in Spanish and French from Trinity College Dublin, Anamaría went on to do an M.A. in Translation Studies at Dublin City University. Since then, she has worked in localization (translating hardware and software from English to Spanish), has been a reader for the blind, and occasionally teaches Spanish. For over 15 years she has translated poetry from Spanish and Italian to English. Anamaría is the recipient of two awards from the Arts Council of Ireland to further her writing. Her translations have won many prizes abroad and her own poetry has been anthologised in Census (Seven Towers), Landing Places (Dedalus), Pomeriggio (Leconte) and other publications. She is currently Translations editor for Colony Journal: www.colony.ie.
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