Pinball
The French chef ground a pinch
of fleur de sel on the fried egg
of my galette bretonne, cracked
a bad joke, and my laugh
bounced off the walls of
the small bistro and hit
the heads of my teens,
leaving horror looks on
their faces. Same look
I must have had 30 years ago
when my mom aligned at
45 degrees the tuning pegs
of my boyfriend’s guitar
while he recounted his day.
Not her fault – she liked order
and he was boring. I felt
a little guilty so I asked the chef
for a chocolate crepe. I felt
guiltier and thought about
starting a diet. A new one.
Maybe the one based on
the length of the index finger.
It should be easy enough –
not eat 12 to 16 hours or
eat feminine food like salads
and shrimps and white wine.
I was still feminine after all,
even if my estrogen levels
argued. I stared at my fingers
and got absorbed with
the beauty of my nail polish.
Damn, Natalia outdid herself.
All the layers and twists
of nude, pink and gold
reminded me of the painted
metallic box I stole
from my childhood friend.
We were playing in his attic.
I hid it in my blouse and
ran to my house. Mom asked
what was I carrying, was it
a bird? She made me give it back;
I was embarrassed so I threw it
under the gate and 40 years
later I confessed my sin
to him. He wasn’t bothered.
Why hadn’t I rescued a bird.
From below the table my dog
Eco started to bark. We paid
and went out into the windy day.
The conspiracy of ravens
I bought a trash bin online: raven black,
metallic with a sophisticated industrial style,
resistant to fingerprints and scratches.
Three plastic compartments to keep
the order, 84,99 €. It came broken.
Emma from customer service told me how
sorry she was and that she needed photos
taken from various angles at 1,5m
to process my complaint. I photographed it
in and outside the box, even sent close-ups
of the cracked plastic. Emma, still sorry,
told me that after a thorough examination
they considered the bin functional, aesthetic,
and offered a 20% discount.
We are all ravens, creatures of cleverness
and survival, hiding our croaks beneath
rules of morality and social complexity.
What’s the use of a beautiful broken trash bin?
How to label and dispose of the unwanted?
It couldn’t hide my colleague’s
plane tickets to a luxury safari to pet
the elephant she adopted. It couldn’t fit
the lectures of my uncle, Horia,
about the goodness of Christianism and
church virtues next to the truth of his
unrecognized child. And the blood of
the little bodies of Ahmed, Aser or Aysal
would leak from the bin no matter how many
patches anyone could stick to it. How could I
continue to be a good loving person
from my quiet kitchen without a proper container?
So I rejected the discount, and Emma—
whose level of sorrows reached its top—
told me to trash the trash bin and
sent me a new one. It came broken.
Election Sunday
It’s dog-walking hour—morning light hurries
to reach the end of the village. Between plots
of poppies and manicured wild grass,
the circus is setting up tents.
On 21st Century Avenue, politicians smile
from posters: Strength to Govern,
The Power of Change. Danger: Zombies!
Tonight 7 pm Circus of Terror.
It smells like flowers here. When I was young
circuses smelled like elephant shit
and wet basement. Once a boyfriend and I
sneaked from the backyard into my basement
and had sex on an ironing board
covered in grandma’s old quilts.
The promise of an exciting time better
than reality. My parents were chatting outside
so we planned to escape through the window.
We worked for hours, giggling in the dark,
to loosen the oxidated screws in the safety bars
with a fork, even after everyone went to bed.
We had options. We could have chosen the door.
He threw his heavy briefcase out, climbed on a chair,
crawled through the window into the dark street
and bumped into a walker who started to yell
that he caught a thief. The neighborhood
dogs barked, all the lights came on.
This morning, below another smiling politician—
Don’t Let Them Win—my dog shits on
a patch of clover, not even 4-leaf, and I pick it up.
Certificate of bravery
I wish I had a brevet like my mom who jumped
from a plane 21 times in 1969. She never made it
to the countdown before opening the parachute:
tumbled like a stone avalanche, burned
her neck on the cords, landed on cow shit.
Better to pull the lever before time than wait
until my brains are scattered on the walls
and mingled with the mold of this 21-year-old
marriage. Nobody else here to scrub them away.
Nobody here to jump for me. I’m befriending
the buzz of the refrigerator tonight. I should
buy myself a new home. With a new fridge.
The one where an old lady lived and left her cane
on the entrance hook, her teen granddaughter
–thick eyebrows, shadowed moustache–framed
in each room. Or the purple-painted one, tiny
and dark, the windows so on top of the neighbors’
we might as well be having non-penetrative sex.
A 43-meter terrace could change my life
if only it didn´t come with a renting family.
I feel like a difficult participant in a TV show
–Say Yes to the Flat–vacillating between
the options, the audience not impressed.
They want to see amputated souls or stabbing
revenge, not a low-and-slow heartbreak story.
Lonesome George
They sent George to us frozen
like a turkey, wrapped in plastic,
his neck a broken saddle under
the heaviness of time. A hundred
slow-going years he chewed
on leaves and bugs and died alone
the last death of a giant turtle.
White gloves on, whistling
a country song, Fred examined
the cadaver to bring him back
to life in the museum enclosure.
The god of mounted animals,
fabricated sunrises, rivers, green
habitats, Fred removed George's
organs and cut off the meat.
Stuffed the shell and skin with foam,
immortalizing the earthy wrinkles
and shy smile. George’s ancestors’
genetics protected them from cancer
but not from hungry humans.
Bishops, pirates, whalers. Explorers
filled pages with drawings and notes
and theories about evolution,
then boiled them piece by piece
with carrots, onions, butter and garlic.
They loved giant turtles. We all love
and treasure them – in sanctuaries.
After all, they might reveal to us
the secrets of longevity.
*****
Laura Damian is a Romanian-Spanish poet who works in finance. She’s living in Barcelona with her husband, two teenage children, an adolescent puppy who often pops up in her poems, and 45 plants she’s almost convinced are judging her. Her poems have been published in Perceptions Magazine, Does It Have Pockets, and Gran Dame Literary.
