i saw a bluebird
and a cardinal
out the window
and i thought of
my mother’s many
miscarriages
i imagined her
weeping, kneeling
over her womb
laid out on a stretcher
above her
no longer feeling
a small heartbeat
bouncing around
the silence of
her tongue
i saw a bluebird
and a cardinal
out the window
and i thought of
the fact that i was
sitting here looking
at birds
as my mother’s
daughter flew
as if there
were a sun in the room
and i cried
as if she could
feel my tears inside
of her
like my tiny fingers
and feet
when i was in
her beautiful
stomach
i saw a bluebird
and a cardinal
out the window
and i thought of
the event
of being born
i do not remember
my birth
nor does
the doctor
whom i cannot claim
to have never met
hands scored
with disinfectant
touching my newborn
body
delicate
i grew up to
tell people i
was born in texas
and they tell me
all about texas
and i learn more
than i would had
i not been born
there, had
i not lived elsewhere
a box
of tissues on
the nightstand
i saw a bluebird
and a cardinal
out the window
and i thought of
how i was a
completely new
person to her
(my mother)
when i was born
and does
a parent ever
truly know the
stranger they created?
so i sat
and wondered
all the while
my mother
in a car
reassuring my every
turn, dodging roadkill
flies on the antlers
more carcasses
than yellow lines
on the road
i saw a bluebird
and a cardinal
out the window
and i thought of
my mother and i
and how are we?
and how many?

no surprise we collide with the future
the great avenger invades our fiber
the old method of collapsing the future
still in the cards. how many cards are there?
the world a stage for mindlessness
ideology more powerful than reality
complexity will have a say in the tale of chaos
misread victimhood to put on a show
the tyranny of dark ideas uncontainable
number pi is missing from the formula but
penguins are resilient to shock therapy, lucky them
we'll hold our breath and see the world anew
no surprise we are inclined to run away from our contribution
to reality, a deeper wound is perhaps
the dark matter of history

the rulers of time must be blindfolded
they invent voidless words, old eager hands
in this time without dimensions
in this space devoid of meaning
they delete their mothers from themselves
the warmth of bodies is imprisoned in anguish
the body invades the mind, and the mind replies,
it invades the body, an impossible conversation
thoughts are transitional landscapes
but thinking might rebell and fragment into a standstill
time filled my mind and stuffed my throat
to tighten the unthinkable pain
on days with thick blood and stagnant winds
no words to fill the void, the unbearable hopelessness
the letters got destroyed by the gastric acid
and so I became... the reflux of pain

this intensity: I rediscover
the edge of falling into oneself,
reinventing reality,
pain, blind feathers, sharp teeth, limits
this deficit  of whispering
thoughts can see their end,  their imaginary double
the roots of words translucent
their feedom released
they dismantle non words,
half-truths or nontruth
birds are free to be birds
or dreams of the air
hunger for connection is a hunger for creation
this feeling a vital movement, an undercurrent hallucinating forests
a delicate complexity of vulnerability and necessary innocence
the forgetting is colourless, as a matter of fact
there is no true forgetting, but nature itself invented
a God of mercy

words are embryos of some thoughts,
it must be said they were arbitrary were they were born
their calling as deep as the alphabet of time
in a preformed space it was already there
the force that keeps a me apart from we
my mother fed me with words day and night
in a time when the word Babel was so tall

is poetry a shortcut or a detour into the unthinkable?
a compromise with the death of language
we anesthetize the dawn getting rid of memory
we ventilate emotions through our muscles
but the Carnot cycle keeps spinning
an emotional engine escaping precision,  not questions
unsaturated images in our stories, an unruly body
suffused with misery and dreaming
I will write an endless poem till darkness exhausts itself  
as a diver who runs out of oxigen

when sand storms are triggered in my hands
black cloths cover the mirrors
I have died an unfelt death

I'm in no hurry,
I'll let time pass by.
Each second as it drops
Bit by bit erodes
Suffering.
I'll be patient.
Each wave that breaks
Is rasp to the rock.
On which I'm bound,
Each speck of rust
Thins the chain.
In just a millennium, or two,
The rock will become sand,
The iron links fine powder,
My bones calcium molecules
Dissolved in water,
Suffering nothing.

By Ana Blandiana, translated by Adam J. Sorkin

searching for beauty in
the pain
or at least the envelopes in which it arrives
I'm deep in debt from feeling too much
at this point, solvency will never come

I see my shadow standing still
on the white wall of an art museum
it weighs on me that this is something I cannot undo

at what point of taking something apart does it
become something different?
because I’m pretty sure I’m someone else
at least, I’m not myself

“how to drown yourself”
a white quilt
suspended
unknown, undrown
bottom two corners sagging
top two pulled taught

tangled air knotting itself throughout my lungs
interwoven with my vital organs like threads of unconsciousness
my breath is never left
undone
unknown, undrown

“to allow yourself to be forgiven,
to find a way forward,
to follow yourself back”
three phrases—
stitched in red
on three white flags
“the future is a hopeful past”
I lowered each to half staff

unknown, undrown
two people seems to be the right amount
people puddle, standing
unknown, undrown

light lingers on stones
I love to be a spectator
women's hair hallucinates sunflowers
time is hitting the walls
today our ribs/smiles don't hurt
these pavements are the custodians
of wind's secrets
our eyes see without effort
a strange divination possesses this journey
from egg to coffin

light travel through us as if through
an ocean of bones
a poem dreams its exile into words
the trees let us see the seeds of time
we confuse happiness
with the boutique of dreams
and that's alright
some magic was saved on Noah's ark

springtime smells of women's hands
a young man conjures an intact eden
silence is grinding the air
at the end of things, the root of water

you escalate my depth
a pain without pain, an effortless mirror,
this flame trapped in the depth of flesh
my body is a quiet urn for
the ash of the days without an inexplicable
you