Cristina M. Moldoveanu

the small woman from the attic sits
cross-legged with her pink plastic
hair rollers for hours. her life spins
like the spool of thread on the sewing
...

The last gift from my father was B.B. King's blues on CD.
A week after my father's death my mother handed me
one of the towels she bought as a gift for the guests
coming to the funeral, as it is customary. This towel
...

a house mouse squeaks under the heavy wardrobe
crumbs are falling
from grandpa's black pipe
the ice cream got dry in the compote bowl
...

love
like a good joke about death
is born
when a little girl hangs cherries behind her ears
...

i.
Because it's New Year's Eve I bought me a pizza
and hid my sorrows munching, tasting,
remembering old days. After all, I am a big child.
...

paint me a crying eye ordered the white demon
it is not necessary said I
can't you see the seagulls flying at a distance
I can hear them cry
...

in our city they shoot fireworks again
as if to scratch God's navel
white seagulls coming from afar die over the roofs
with their beaks crisscrossed
...

beyond the circus curtain there's nothing to be found
you don't have any goods to bid on them
every dream was already booked in advance
everyone searches for a more humane world
...

it happens every time when it rains on the backstreets
you can feel through the rhythm of pending death
the blood pulse in your ears
an echo in a seashell
...

By themselves


if people are trees then they are mostly like to be pear trees
...

if you are my friend you would always believe in what I say
we would bite from the same orange even if we know
that stones disappear and rivers remain
even if I read Heidegger and Kierkegaard and I dislike Confucius or Laozi
...

in the psychiatric hospital angels have fever blisters
because of too much powdered milk swallowed still hot
from soft plastic cups
as pink as their fingernails lacking calcium
...

and there's rigoletto laughing out the cry of the one who's defeated by fate among the spectators dressed in blue by the light flooding them between the acts/ and there's the woman eternally defeated by love/ a cup with poison from which they drink/ the men who used to believe

maybe the world means to win over that sentimental beast/ to open your eyes without amazement in front of the newborn's cry/ the world where passions die in the name of freedom
...

Too tired to sleep on in the morning, I wake up
afraid of my own dreams, when the garbage truck

arrives at my backdoor.Those men collecting everything
...

it is so easy to kill me unknown brother
carved Samaritan image
do yourself a favor I'm an undecided blotch of color
indigo reaching for purple
...

today I'm furious
I'm furious with Kriemhild because she took revenge
with Hamlet because he took revenge
with the Count of Monte Cristo because he took revenge
...

the sky is heavy/ dolls' eyes are murky…
I see too many horror masks/ clowns grinning/
washing their makeup in the same laundry basin
one last love dying
...

Once upon a happy time,
At the end of a long street,
Lived a little blue eyed girl
Smiling always very sweet.
...

inside the freshly renovated library they're cataloging blood bags:
those Rh-negative are honored on the upper shelves
where nobody can reach them,
those from universal donors are less valued,
...

you waited too much
about thirty years before you can say jack robinson
cheops kephren mikerynus
otherwise life like a water under the desert
...