Three Poems by Mihaela Melnic

 

The Rotten Fruit of Disgrace

 

Splinters of fear are embedded

in the hearts of those who were born Ukrainians

and want to live and die Ukrainians.

 

And he, who lost the right

of being called human,

the rotten fruit of disgrace,

born from the accursed womb

of his mother

contents them all

about death

like a god of the underworld.

 

Until yesterday every heart

pulsed euphoric

in the clutches of hope

like raw diamonds waiting for the craftsman

to take off the coal,

but today the same hearts are dripping with despair

between the creases of dystopia.

 

Cynicism and heavy artillery weave together

in a sanguineous chronicle.

 

Under the bombs, there is Ukraine.

Above it all, winged pure souls;

but, wandering are the obscure

spirits of those

drenched in pig's fat

by the hand of the righteous. 

 

 

In People's Square

 

"I have nothing! Nothing but this", you say.

 

When your tongue scourges the words

out of your mouth like that,

arms outstretched - a Christ on a cross,

filth on the outside but not within you,

pigeons and seagulls take flight;

they had just quenched their thirst

at the lions' mouths.

 

Marble everywhere, cobblestones and rain,

one polishing the other, churches all around,

an obelisk in the middle of the square - quite patriarchal,

and you have nothing

yet you display some wisdom

and it's not of that kind

that is rotting in four spots of your mouth.

 

Now He's Yours

 

Hunger pummelled him hard in the stomach,

his shadow got scared

and had cowered beneath him

on the concrete.

 

Fragments of bread from an interstellar explosion

found their way into his cerebral cortex;

they tasted good as a memoir.

 

Yesterday that man was mine,

now he's yours.

 

The day before he had his own home,

now he has yours.

 

Hug him, seat him with you

at the table.

If you want to give him your shirt,

don't think twice,

or think of it

and then do it.

Mihaela Melnic lives and writes in Rome, Italy where her prose and poetry evolve and take different shapes with every new life experience.

Her work has appeared in various  journals and magazines, including Spillwords magazine, Lothlorien Poetry journal and Ariel Chart journal, both online and in print.

She is the author of the bilingual poetry collection "Change of Seasons" and her latest work "Evermore", was co-authored and released in September 2021 through 17Numa Press.

For more of Melnic's published work visit her website: https://telluricverse.wordpress.com/