Maria Stadnicka
LIVE SHOW
A dog wakes up at dawn
to finish his homework,
his softly spoken brother
makes tea, laughs at
the passing postman
who trips over a stone.
An owl gets home
from a night shift, critical
of the morning noise:
boiling water setting a fire alarm.
The sun looks back
forgets where to go next,
the radio airs an interview
with a PR consultant.
He answers all the questions
with yes. The ground swells.
LESSON
He says the length of an eyelash
makes one misunderstand socialism.
Shaving foam floats cold, hairy clouds
in a bowl by the radiator. He switches
the radio off, repeats the seven o’clock
headlines in agreement with the recent
scientific discovery. His barber blade slides
in zig-zag through the air, reaches the back
of my head. My plaits drop twitching.
Father believes the news. The presenter talks
directly to him, watching our daily lesson
of self-defense. Today it starts with short hair,
followed by Kalashnikov loading practice
and a long-distance march in our flat. After break,
he resumes the training with survival skills
in case of attack, then a short summary
of combat strategy for six-year-olds.
I hear a knife next door, peeling potatoes.
The wall clock strikes twelve and my plaits
stop growing. Hairlocks hutch in my ribcage.
Sometimes, when it’s quiet, I cough
them out and hide them under the floor boards.
HYPERREALITY
A roundabout ten feet away
from the poetry library, as profile
pic on my Facebook page
and snippets of past-present-future
running a commentary on life
with updated adverts for my reality:
a trip to Stockholm, missing pets,
gardens in need of spring-pruning.
Among thousands of people rushing
in and out of soundproofed rooms,
one man leaves a window ajar.
I almost hear the conversation
he has with the ambulance crew.
It stopped for a homeless girl
found asleep in his greenhouse.
Virtual sigh. The book turns its pages.
I’m lost in algorithms and keep
scrolling in circles until I stumble
over a footnote when a rabbit
gets caught in the headlights
of trucks speeding on the motorway.
I jump in the picture to pick it up,
the drivers watch and comment
that parking is forbidden
on emergency lanes. I wonder
if the shade on my screen
is night-blue or day-blue. I hurry
back to my car, holding something
real, close to my chest. The tyres’ heat
burns my legs, zapping past in smoke
and pixels. Behind the wheel, I am
a king whose lips are sealed by fear.
SOLITARY CONFINEMENT. DAY 67
The stalls at the back stand up,
holding on to the balustrades.
Jockeys gallop on race tracks,
the spectators squint their eyes,
follow the speed, losing sight
of a horse fallen between obstacles.
A clutter of vowels erupts
in the open, the stands hold
their breath. A few seconds left
to the finale. The winner struggles
to stop sprinting.
In the background, the horse
catches a glimpse of the finishing line
before a soundless gunshot.
A dog wakes up at dawn
to finish his homework,
his softly spoken brother
makes tea, laughs at
the passing postman
who trips over a stone.
An owl gets home
from a night shift, critical
of the morning noise:
boiling water setting a fire alarm.
The sun looks back
forgets where to go next,
the radio airs an interview
with a PR consultant.
He answers all the questions
with yes. The ground swells.
LESSON
He says the length of an eyelash
makes one misunderstand socialism.
Shaving foam floats cold, hairy clouds
in a bowl by the radiator. He switches
the radio off, repeats the seven o’clock
headlines in agreement with the recent
scientific discovery. His barber blade slides
in zig-zag through the air, reaches the back
of my head. My plaits drop twitching.
Father believes the news. The presenter talks
directly to him, watching our daily lesson
of self-defense. Today it starts with short hair,
followed by Kalashnikov loading practice
and a long-distance march in our flat. After break,
he resumes the training with survival skills
in case of attack, then a short summary
of combat strategy for six-year-olds.
I hear a knife next door, peeling potatoes.
The wall clock strikes twelve and my plaits
stop growing. Hairlocks hutch in my ribcage.
Sometimes, when it’s quiet, I cough
them out and hide them under the floor boards.
HYPERREALITY
A roundabout ten feet away
from the poetry library, as profile
pic on my Facebook page
and snippets of past-present-future
running a commentary on life
with updated adverts for my reality:
a trip to Stockholm, missing pets,
gardens in need of spring-pruning.
Among thousands of people rushing
in and out of soundproofed rooms,
one man leaves a window ajar.
I almost hear the conversation
he has with the ambulance crew.
It stopped for a homeless girl
found asleep in his greenhouse.
Virtual sigh. The book turns its pages.
I’m lost in algorithms and keep
scrolling in circles until I stumble
over a footnote when a rabbit
gets caught in the headlights
of trucks speeding on the motorway.
I jump in the picture to pick it up,
the drivers watch and comment
that parking is forbidden
on emergency lanes. I wonder
if the shade on my screen
is night-blue or day-blue. I hurry
back to my car, holding something
real, close to my chest. The tyres’ heat
burns my legs, zapping past in smoke
and pixels. Behind the wheel, I am
a king whose lips are sealed by fear.
SOLITARY CONFINEMENT. DAY 67
The stalls at the back stand up,
holding on to the balustrades.
Jockeys gallop on race tracks,
the spectators squint their eyes,
follow the speed, losing sight
of a horse fallen between obstacles.
A clutter of vowels erupts
in the open, the stands hold
their breath. A few seconds left
to the finale. The winner struggles
to stop sprinting.
In the background, the horse
catches a glimpse of the finishing line
before a soundless gunshot.
Copyright © Maria Stadnicka 2019
Winner of 12 national Romanian prizes for poetry, Maria Stadnicka is now based in Gloucestershire, where she has worked in radio and TV and now teaches sociology and psychology. Her work has appeared in International Times, Dissident Voice, and in various journals and literary magazines in Austria, Germany, Romania, Mexico, Moldova, US, UK and Australia. Her latest slim volume The Unmoving (2018) is published by Broken Sleep Books; previous collections are O-Zone Friendly, A Short Story about War, Imperfect, and Exitus. Forthcoming in 2019, Somnia at Knives, Forks and Spoons Books, Bearings II at Poets' Republic Books, Uranium Bullets at Cervena Barva Press, US. Her work has previously appeared in Molly Bloom 15 and 17.
