Two Poems by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

 

Vessels

                 Medusa--from Greek mythology—“guardian, ,protectress”

                 The owl and the pussycat went out to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat

                  --Edward Lear

 

Deep sockets of greying clouds--watery graves

turning over in their dark harbours

were my mother’s azure eyes after years of suffering

Nights of tormented tossing

the anxious wringing of blood from decaying rags of skin

Chilling fear cast on tides both real and imagined

set her adrift--a virginal vessel of nerves sinking

into polite depths of raging dementia

Nerves whose far-reaching arms with emotional pull

whose tuning-fork mind might intuitively grasp

Hope’s fraying high-wire tossed above

Truth’s bottomless floor

 

This way and that way she turned

This way and that way she turned from and to us—

turned to and from her cherished chimeras receding farther

into their horizons Turned from and finally to

her Eternal Lamp of Night reflecting reflecting

wavelength upon wavelength:

What will they think of me? What will they think of me!—

that shallow end of a liquid whisper

in which we her dutiful sirens drowned daily--

midnight-devotees lip-syncing in unison

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

 

A foil for our father’s madness my mother—born to serve—

shielded us from that which she left us most vulnerable to

No sacrifice too big for her fragile tidal wave-breaking heart

no criticism to escape her velvet-gloved tentacles

We turning from bedrock to perfected stone

stood before her—an antique looking glass—

a Fun-House corridor of distorted and noble ideals

unrecognizable to ourselves as she was to herself—

a glass nobody—a message in a bottle--

head tossed from sea to polished sea

in a beautiful pea-green boat

 

 

the gift 

 

i asked you to write me this poem 

before you could find the words 

to tell me   you don’t even know me 

(i’m disguised as myself today) 

 

i still trip over your laces 

and other fancy thoughts 

i’d like to know who you are 

so we can untie the knots 

 

i used to call you mama 

i never did catch your real name 

i always had trouble pronouncing mine 

so am i    or are you to blame? 

 

i choke on the strings 

that tie us apart 

guilt has baited fate 

but i’ll not be swallowed 

by the lump in my throat 

could it be your words i ate? 

 

i walk your lines 

while you tow mine 

with oriental feet 

love is learning to unlearn 

the pain of being unbound 

 

i start all my paragraphs with I   now 

so that i don’t lose my place 

you came first so long ago 

i don’t have a face 

 

i lie awake in your daydreams 

waiting to come true 

papa didn’t get any older 

just a deeper shade of blue 

 

now   it’s time to tuck you in    ginny 

with honesty and grace 

you leave more than just a memory 

wrapped in an embrace 

 

i’d give you everything you’ve got 

to have your gift for giving 

the only thing left i have left to give 

is the reason you gave me for living 

 

someday i’ll heed that part of me 

that bears me sane and whole 

that calls me in when i’m undone 

and life is getting cold 

 

but now   it’s time to say so long 

here’s one last kiss to grow on 

you’ll always be my little girl 

who’ll help me tie your bow on? 

 

Antonia Alexandra Klimenko was first introduced on the BBC and to the literary world by the legendary James Meary Tambimuttu of Poetry London–-publisher of T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Henry Miller and Bob Dylan, to name a few.  his death, it was his friend, the late great Kathleen Raine, who took an interest in her writing and encouraged her to publish.  A nominee for the Pushcart Prize and a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, she is widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (which she represents France) and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the recipient of two grants: one from Poets in Need, of which Michael (100 Thousand Poets for Change) Rothenberg is a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award bestowed on her by Kathleen Spivack and Joseph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Writer/ Poet in Residence.  Her collected poems On the Way to Invisible is forthcoming in 2022.