Claudia Serea
Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born writer who immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Her poems and translations have appeared in Mudfish, Main Street Rag, Oberon, The Comstock Review, Harpur Palate, Exquisite Corpse, Fourth River, The Red Wheelbarrow, and in numerous other anthologies and journals. She is the author of two poetry collections: Eternity’s Orthography (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and To Part Is to Die a Little, selected as a contest finalist by Main Street Rag in 2009. She also writes creative nonfiction, published by The Rambler and The Writers’ Workshop Review. Claudia lives in New Jersey and works in New York for a major publishing company.
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
*
Identifying the poets
Bob is a poet:
a tall, smiling man, with curly hair—
and he is a lawyer, too.
He comes in the morning and drinks coffee,
tapping thoughtfully on his laptop
elegies for lost stocks.
Another poet, the skinny type,
sleeps in the subway,
holding love poems in his hand,
love poems on yellow papers.
The marketing guy is a poet, too.
He named the lipsticks
Moondrops
Wine Escapade
Midnight Mocha.
Respiro, 2007
*
Mr. Hoffmann
Mr. Hoffmann has a bright green hat
and red jacket, has glasses,
sits on his small chair
playing waltzes on the accordion
in the 57th Street station
A little town with steep streets
and old buildings with geraniums,
scenes from old European movies
pour from his waltz
to the pavement, to the crowd—
and suddenly I miss everything so much
Although I grew up in Romania, not Austria,
and I didn’t listen to accordion waltzes, only in
French or Italian movies about cities
where I’ve never been,
still, I miss them
I give him a dollar,
longing for cities where I’ve never been.
Respiro, 2007
*
the last way
dressed in black, with headscarves
like ravens, they come
to walk the dead man
on his last way
up on the tractor,
his coffin, decorated
with crying daughters
and orange lilies
after the funeral, they rush
to sit at the feast
at long tables, judging
the family’s offering
leaving, they take
the bottles of wine, hidden
in skirts; the wind pours crows
over fields
rain then washes words
into forgetfulness:
the dead with the dead,
the living with the living
Language and Culture, winter 2007
*
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 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
*
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
*
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
Honorable Mention, Oberon, 2005
*
Bucharest (I)
rain falling over
Cismigiu, and we are
falling through it, embraced,
we drag clouds with us,
like wounded animals
through a liquid city
here is our street, where
walls crumble
and suddenly I see
your heart:
sparrows come quickly,
picking
its green, shiny tip,
grown
through cobblestone
Special Merit Poem, The Comstock Review, 2006
