Claudia Serea

Que Sera, Serea

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Poems for my father

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Here are the poems from the series My father’s quiet friends in prison, part of the chapbook The System published recently. You can listen to the first poem here: http://www.bluestemmagazine.com/?p=2206

My father’s quiet friends 1958-1962

Craiova, Gherla, Giurgiu, Salcia, Periprava

 

1. The gruel

 I’m lumpy, lukewarm, and gray,

and you could use me for glue,

mortar, or clay.

 

Inside your cupped hands,

I breathe my steam,

soft as a prayer.

 

Dip your tin spoon

inside me.

 

Lift me

to your hungry lips.

 

You don’t have to like me.

 

 

 

2. The blanket

 

I can’t protect you from nightmares,

or from the hands that grab you in the dark

and push you back

into the beating room.

 

Forgive me.

 

I’m so thin,

worn to threads by the bodies

I covered before you,

 

I can’t even protect you

from the cold.

 

But I can offer you my checkered field

where you can move the armies

made of bread,

 

molded with saliva

and hardened

into soldiers,

horses, bishops, towers,

and queens.

 

At last, this battle is yours to win.

 

 


3. The piece of glass

 

You guard me with your life.

 

You spit on me

and smear me

with shavings of soap,

 

and sprinkle lime dust

from the walls

 

until I have a new,

smooth skin.

 

Now I’ve become a surface

for poems

 

and equations

with multiple unknowns.

 

Today’s lesson is French,

taught in whispers.

 

Write down the words

with a sharp twig

and repeat them.

 

No one can wipe them

off your mind:

 

Je suis,

tu es,

il est.

 

I am.

You are.

He is.

 

We are.

 

 

 

4. The small stone

 

All you need

is a stumble

 

even if earns

you a boot

in the ribs.

 

And you pick me up,

hide me

under your tongue,

and carry me inside.

 

I’m your phone,

your postcard,

your smoke signal,

 

the only one who can talk

through ceilings and walls

 

and send a coded message

to the man released today:

 

Ring the bell

to my mother’s house

 

and tell her

I’m alive.


 

 

5. The moon

 

I come to look at you at night

to see if you’re still

curled on your cot.

 

Thousands of years,

I witnessed

the butchering of men

called history.

 

I can’t help anyone.

 

I rise,

stir the howls in wolfs,

and swell the tides,

 

but I can’t pull you out

from your brother’s

murderous arms.

 

I can only hold

your hope

coins

 

in a tin cup

in the sky.

Filed under Claudia Serea political repression human rights political prison father