"Pandora" (1914) by Odilon Redon via the Metropolitan Museum of Art
by Clara Burghelea
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I no longer carry a child on my hip, and actually, wash my hair,
I even enjoy coffee dates with other mothers, where I swear, we either talk about our sex lives or parenting. Both, a matter of strict coordination. I should know paradise, it smells of tantrum-free afternoons, except this is my limbo, where I am caught between longing a foreign body’s weight against mine, the open-throated sky above, no misplaced breath of motherhood, and Thermomixing my way into the cool evenings. There is language lapping at my feet, the heady scent of sea in my nostrils, all folded nicely inside my poems that won’t bend to the burden of the mundane, yet cut out all the things—people, chores, body parts—that no longer serve me. Outside these shredded bits of the day, the city moans and swirls. |
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Clara is a Romanian-born poet with an MFA in Poetry from Adelphi University. Recipient of the Robert Muroff Poetry Award, her poems and translations appeared in Ambit, Waxwing, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. Her collection The Flavor of the Other was published in 2020 with Dos Madres Press. She is the Review Editor of Ezra, An Online Journal of Translation.
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