Static
It wasn’t an escape pod, nor a hard-squared fruit
with a soft pit that would work hard to round itself,
nor was it a cylinder, flattened in all cardinal directions,
tapered at the head and feet, wide at the shoulders –
from where I was on the grass, it was a cube stretched
towards the horizon, long like a sliding of limbs into limbo –
while we encircled it, children, grandchildren, black ribbons
pinned to lapels, our gazes dipped for one more moment
into its brown waters and all that static of the wood’s
ambers, the lilies with their Turk’s caps, my aunts with their
pneumonia of words, the sky, a cough and I could bet
the earthworms in that boggy pie that he, my grandpa,
was watching himself through all our eyes and all that
downpour like the day’s release Oh, wet pet is what I was
becoming when I could breathe again before
the four-faced door, which he would not have room to open.
A pipit sang on the low branch of the pine at the other end
of the grave and in response, a pipit sang, only further away.
Dear Marie Kondo I’m Sorry But I’ve Already Made It Glorious
I have packed my two languages in two sacks folded each like into a muslin bow
tied to a muslin bow stuffed them all into a deep bag down at the bottom
got every qualifier depicting the moon as if it was the butt of a hot lover
where it’s only my index finger I needed to point with and the moon would glow
if I could only make myself invisible especially in this language if you only knew
how much I love you I put that in too I also kept a mountain a berry a willow
cottonwood I saved sunburn and ash they spark joy gravel is what I need when
I describe my first self portrait to a bunch of friends in a pub in Hackney wolf
canis lupus pup autumn on river Ciuma Peak Piatra Craiului National Park Carpathian
Mountains horizontal this is me in my previous life and I look in my other sack
where words are hands that hold and tear you up I pick one up for exotic effect
precar biodiversitate cățelușă but no one asks what’s the meaning of that last word
and the rain will keep us all inside pouring with verbs like cash by the time
they’ll ring the bell my ears pricked up with the wind getting through the small hour
of my fishnet will be on the path of leaves where the woods go swish swish
Marie, last night I dreamed I had to fit into the word boat to get to the other side
and although I somehow managed to fit in the paddle was way too heavy to be picked up
that little thing that seemed to have carried me halfway through I had to let it go
Iulia David is a Romanian-born poet living in London. Her poetry appears in various magazines including Poetry Ireland Review, Magma, The Rialto, and Under the Radar.