2 poems by Ioana Cosma

Mother Earth
Pregnant is the earth and was from the beginning
its replenished womb bathes us all in light
it is forever birthing bringing forth offspring like
the sky once exploded to make room for life.

At times we hear its moans of labor, its trembling
voice from roaring falls, the naked skin of trees
that crack under the weight of time. A work of passion
of the earth who always forgives our childish crimes.

It is small and gigantic at once, not a star, but an
incandescent rock. Though it might feel like magic, her
creation is mostly an act of love superseding intelligent
design, the grace of artwork and man's climb up above.

We tread hurriedly and with no sympathy for its voluptuous
body that's nonetheless never vulgar even when it is raped
like the times when we scratch through its belly, suck on its
blood and cover its sumptuous breasts in concrete and glass.

Yet the earth remains pure waiting for the day when
its favorite children begin to see her devotion and selflessness
in the midst of the abundance of life that seems to have been
born for and through her, the smallest of gods.





The Sound of the Earth
From the blue bellies of ocean floors
and vanilla lagoons of visceral calling
there comes a sound that sails through
the living like a subtle graze of the lover’s hand.

It traverses heart-shaped wings and Elfin ears
the first entry of the hoe, with a crunch, in the
knotty earth, by the eternal man who hears
his wife’s prayers every night and the smell of herbs.

From the shuffling of semantic sands that become
honey, the sound of crystal glassworks like
a memory of stars being born, kissing the sea
upon the encounter between the eye and the eve.

The pounding feet of elephants echo the throbbing lava
and magma dressing the earth like a god that’s to be married
to the bluebells and gardens of Flora, to the
swallows that fall in the zenith of muted feasts.

My tears they ran with the force of a mountain river
in spring, a deluge to take to the sea my small and frail home
just like the clouds gather every time they are called
by the trumpets of more mirror and smoke.

Return to Journal

Ioana Cosma is a university lecturer at the Faculty of Letters from the University of Pitesti in Romania. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto. She is interested in twentieth-century literature, cinema and philosophy. She has written articles on Modernist aesthetics (the Gradiva series) and Postmodernist art and literature. She is also a writer, and she has published six volumes of poetry, two novels, short stories and a play in Romania, Canada, and The United States. She is the recipient of an academic and creative residency at The Ionian Institute for the Arts and Culture in Kephalonia, Greece.

WordCity Literary Journal is provided free to readers from all around the world, and there is no cost to writers submitting their work. Substantial time and expertise goes into each issue, and if you would like to contribute to those efforts, and the costs associated with maintaining this site, we thank you for your support.