WordCityLit

Leave of Absence

Born with the weight of a younger brother on his head,
dad traversed an ocean after his brother.
Piccolo sus piccolo jos -the map is made for us.
Bear witness to the geographic degradations, the erosions
in valleys and the quieting of rivers, deltas and estuaries.
All or some traces of immigrant trauma remains 
floats in my head, with neurons that fire away blatantly
to kill my vision and increase the delusions that can kill me.
From father to son to daughter, the manic-depression 
took hold streaming cascades of messages from the inflamed
brain, the over soaked brain, the underwater brain, to me.
I put an end to it. The shaman had to see me in Orlando on 
his property. I tell father that I am visiting a Christian friend
and he buys him expensive chocolates and drives me to the airport.
Assimilation of the immigrant is the burden of the children.
Ones who face it, take on the lifting of the burden and pushing 
the brother off their shoulders, so they have a chance at walking
a straight line in life. Yet nothing is as straight and arrow.
The spine curves inward at the base, from an accident at the age of 10.
Broken coccyx, and people have been trying to kill me since I was born.
I love the language of the enemy, I speak it well. I am immersed in 
transactional speech from early teenagehood. I buy my vowels and 
roll them inside my mouth to bide my time, I pronounce the truth
in the burden that buries daughters and sons, brothers and sisters,
alike. Just like neighbors pronounced our names, Pacurar, to the secret
police behind closed doors. Dad wanted a better life for us. Forgive me for
my lack of eloquence, they shot the dictator on national TV in the 80s.
Did you see it? No trial, no burial. They unearthed the tortured and we 
recognized among them neighbors and friends. The sun rose again at 
the shore of a different kind of torture and we tried to surf on our raft.
Dad, never let go of his anger and his betrayed body now fights. 
Injections of raise his white blood cell count and others for his red blood
cells. People have been trying to kill him since he was born. I am not inside
the story, never could imagined a better leave of absence than my own.
The draught comes with thirst, infinite thirst. The earth thirsts
for the blue skies to darken, to precipitate into cloud formations. 





I love your soul after your death

Am I naughty to turn the page, my eyes caged
inside the phrase Simon’s coming of age. Let
a flower bloom, says nature when it takes the 
Hippocratic Oath to protect its sisters.
The nature crusher, the one who stomps on buds,
will be butted out of the equation in an equestrian
game gone wrong. The mistral has caught up to us,
all we can do is dig caves inside our souls, to capture
our last breaths. Simon laughing, made me turn the page,
can’t you see? The observer is implicated, is accomplice,
is nearly fated for the crash. I love your soul after
your death. As I turn curiosity into action, I suppress
my dissatisfaction with his laughter, turn the daughter 
into a villain, who cannot erase, but digs further into 
misfired action, into the canal she pushed her way through 
original fear. The encounter with lights, brightening
her first breath, the blood on the operating table, the blood
on her mother’s legs. Miracles happen in huge amounts 
Somewhere over some rainbow. As split from the source
as we are, we are just trying to find our way home. 
In the dark theater, turning the pages of the collection,
closing the eyes that can see more than the heart can
handle. couples make love in a passionate,
hungry, smothering way, as I fall deep into the well. 
No canal can free me now. No hands grab for me somehow.
Downtrodden by the love I grabbed, no angel wings,
no eye love, no laser beams, to bring me back. 





Welcome to the House of Yes


Fromm Ariana Reines’ poem “ Rose”: 
“If I knew the words I would bid the mother of us all be seated”

Welcome to the House of Yes,
I look up the word: melancholia.
What does it mean?
Yes, I repeat. 
If I knew words, I would not use the dictionary
I would bid all the rapists in the world to get
how do you say…decapitated?
Or maybe dismembered where it hurts most.
I did not gasp when he entered me,
I ridiculed him.
When I do not know where I am going,
I take a leap, I dissociate and numb my body.
The CEO of my emotions leaves, or is dormant
and I can have my play. The rape lasted and lasted.
My body plastered on the ceiling reflected the struggling
one on the bed.
I would have said NO. Wait, I did say NO,
a NO he did not comprehend. The anger surges and I gasp,
I cannot find my footing, the earth shakes and the skies
above break. The thunder bolt reaches the core of the earth
I know now it is time. Time to send asunder those who no
longer serve.  A woman’s world belongs inside the circle.
Surrounding her are the mothers of us all.
Seated in their witchy ways, readying their arms to flail with 
the wind, cast the spells of old, upon this new world.
You need to be redirected, child, they say.
If I knew words, no more than YES would suffice,
inside the circle. Like a rosebud ready to bloom,
so would the circle grow. I am lost somehow inside
the words, between them and their weight is suffocating.
Yes, I hear in the distance. I prick up my ears and continue
on the path without an end in sight.

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Adela Sinclair is a NYFA Grant winning Romanian American poet, translator, and teacher. Her Chapbook entitled LA REVEDERE is now available through Finishing Line Press. Adela is currently working with an editor on her first full-length poetry collection, “The Butcher’s Granddaughter,” a lyrical memoir of her childhood in Romania. Adela holds a BA in French Culture and Civilization from SUNY Albany, with additional coursework at the Sorbonne University of Paris, an MA in Education from Hunter College (NYC), and an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from St. Francis College (Brooklyn).

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