Claudia Serea
Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born poet who immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Her poems and translations have appeared in 5 a.m., Meridian, Harpur Palate, Exquisite Corpse, Word Riot, Blood Orange Review, Cutthroat, Green Mountains Review, and many others. She is the author of three poetry collections: To Part Is to Die a Little (Červená Barva Press), Angels & Beasts (Phoenicia Publishing, Canada), and A Dirt Road Hangs from the Sky (8th House Publishing, Canada). She also published the chapbooks Eternity’s Orthography (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and With the Strike of a Match (White Knuckles Press, 2011). She co-edited and co-translated The Vanishing Point That Whistles, an Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Poetry (Talisman Publishing, 2011).
Read an interview and poems here: http://connotationpress.com/poetry/479-claudia-serea-poetry
More recent poems here: www.whlreview.com/no-6.3/poetry/ClaudiaSerea.pdf
*
For the forty soldiers of the XII Legion Fulminata
Sift the flour three times,
for fear, forgiveness, faith.
Make a nest in the middle
and pour the milk.
Think of the frozen Lake Sevasta
embracing the martyrs.
Let yeast foam
and bloom a warm flower.
Break the eggs.
Think of ankles and kneecaps
broken by hammers.
Add lemon zest rinds,
glowing crowns of saints.
Melt butter.
Think of ice melting on soldiers’ skin.
Mix with oil and knead
until the dough speaks and breathes.
Breathe.
Pound and throw the dough 100 times.
Torture it.
Tell it to renounce God.
Taste.
Add sugar,
pinch of salt, of patience.
Leave it by the oven to rise, alive.
Make figure eights
shaped like humans,
with heads and bellies
of braided dough.
Brush with beaten egg.
Align the small army.
The forty soldiers of the XII Legion Fulminata
go straight into fire.
Sink them in honey,
sprinkle with chopped walnuts.
Think of the forgotten ones,
known or unknown.
Think of the unidentified,
missing, vanished.
Call out unspoken names.
For them, break apart the macinici cake.
Take a bite of its soft body,
fragrant and sweet.
Ask for forgiveness of the wandering,
fugitives, lonely,
ones that lived before us
and are gone.
First published in Connotation Press, An Online Artifact
*
The first 80,000 are hard. The next 2 million are easy
1.
Forgive me, Grandma, for not speaking sooner:
my mouth was stitched by my mother and father
who thought it was best that way.
2.
I won’t give you anything I won’t give you any-
thing I won’t give you anything I won’t give you
anything I won’t give you anything I won’t give
you anything I won’t give you anything I won’t
give you anything. I won’t give you any damn thing,
unless you leave me for dead,
and they did.
3.
Cranking up the machine,
the president explains:
The first 80,000 are hard.
The next 2 million are easy.
4.
Send in the troops. Send in the troops.
Send in the troops the tanks the trains
send in the military tribunals the prosecutors the judges
send in the troops the troops the troops
to shoot them chain them jail them send them
where the mute had weaned the mare.
They must be guilty of something:
send in the troops.
5.
What makes a nation bite its own flesh?
How does a country turn cannibal?
In a burlap sack stitched shut,
Grandma abandoned the cat
that ate her own kittens.
6.
Rows, rows, rows, rows.
Rows, rows, rows, rows.
I see my grandfather in one of these rows.
Behind him, his cousins, his neighbors, his friends.
My father is further away,
in the rows of the young ones, worked to death.
Forgive him, Grandma, for not speaking sooner:
his mouth was stitched with fear.
7.
I am a product of this machine
that feeds on grandparents, on parents,
and spits out the new generations,
memory cards erased,
then swallows us again
and again.
8.
I was there,
in one of the school rows,
my red pioneer tie flapping,
proudly reciting my achievements.
Today, my father lives closer to death
than to his youth in the gulag.
In the grapevine shadow, we visit the past
with flashlights of plum brandy,
and we unstitch it thread by thread,
we tear it apart.
First published in 5 a.m.
Note:
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the first Romanian Communist president, bragged that 80,000 peasants were arrested for the crime of resisting the nationalization of the land between 1949 and 1951. It’s estimated that, by 1989, the total number of victims of the Romanian Communist regime reached 2 million.
*
The Eden Rose
1.
All night I listened to the thunder,
nectar of fear underarms.
Tobacco flowers and doors
opened and closed
with muffled cries.
Car wheels, soldiers, shouts,
Do you really have to do this?
luggage dragged on the gravel road,
mother’s shuffled steps leaving the house.
Then, the ooze of silence in my ears.
The wind moved the leaves of sky
and, in the morning,
everyone I knew
was gone.
2.
Crabgrass crept in.
Naked,
down to the ground,
I watched the weeds’ rise to power.
I bloomed in secret,
releasing my scent only at night.
I cried rosehips,
pain ingrained in wood.
In spring, I grew hands
and climbed the trellis,
new thorns on my head.
I watched the road from the roof for years,
burning orange and pink
and waiting
for my family’s return.
Winner of the Franklin-Christoph Merit Award, 2011
*
The last one to leave Romania turn off the light
For my father
1.
When I grow up I will emigrate
when I finish school I will
emigrate when I finish college
I will emigrate when I look
for a job I will emigrate when
I marry I will emigrate when I
have a child I will emigrate
when I get a divorce I will
emigrate when I’m old
I will emigrate when I die.
The last one to leave Romania turn off the light.
2.
We are not migrant people.
We don’t have a clock in our brain
to tell us when it’s time to leave the country.
How do we know it’s time?
The wild geese know when fall comes
when the leaves emigrate from the trees.
3.
We are willing to work harder
somewhere else,
we are willing to not speak our language
somewhere else,
we are willing to not speak at all
somewhere else,
we are willing to live underground
somewhere else,
we are willing to live in shame
somewhere else,
we are willing to have our children
somewhere else,
we are willing to leave our children behind
somewhere else.
4.
Poor nations export fruits
or the hands to pick or deliver them,
the delivery man said,
bringing oranges into a restaurant in New York City.
5.
Strawberries in Spain, instead of sand castles.
Hope is a woman with crooked hands,
who strikes a match somewhere in Madrid
and smokes by a window.
The flicker is seen across countries and seas
and signals an army to move.
It’s temporary, we say.
It’s just for a while. For two years.
It’s for work. It’s only to save some money.
It will go fast.
6.
I say, it’s a disease.
It’s a collective brain tumor caused by poor nutrition.
No milk, no meat, no eggs, no cheese.
The lack of protein makes the people docile
but causes an unexplainable long-term longing.
For better health
and easy control of the masses—no sugar
and absolutely no butter.
Take away the bread and we all want to emigrate,
even after five generations.
Possible side effects:
blue tile in the bathroom,
a new Logan car,
an upgraded kitchen in the grandparents’ apartment
where motherless children grow up
having plenty of Play Stations, Dells,
Samsungs and Erikssons.
Electronics: a measure for happiness.
7.
Strawberries in Spain.
Oranges in Greece.
Olives in Italy.
The fruit grows ripe with content,
knowing it will be picked by Romanian hands.
Meanwhile, my mother-in-law’s vineyard
is picked by crows and blackbirds.
Rugs of apples rot under the trees
in my parents’ orchard.
They are too old for so much work
and there is no help for hire.
Every night, my father leaves a light on,
just in case I come home.
Mudfish, 2009
*
The space between
the space between the legs
walking the space between
me and you, two dark buildings
with white shirts hanging
on the clotheslines between us,
two trees on a hill
with or without a hammock in the space
between the branches full of wind,
with or without a mockingbird
in the space between
the arms, with or without embrace
in the space between breaths,
the space between lips,
between teeth and tongue,
between knife and bread,
between life and death.
The Red Wheelbarrow, 2009
*
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
