Heritage
Let's put down roots you said--
buy a house have a kid get a car
Let's not lose another year
wandering like gypsies all over
creation
(Mind you
this would be the same year
you planted yourself
in another woman's garden--
the same winter
we buried you in the ground)
Let's not I said
combing centuries from my hair
Let's honour what we've already lost
Everything
slipped through my fingers
that year
Nothing
took root in me
only you
six feet under
I pulled my hair out
by its roots
over you--
for every secret
for every lie
for every betrayal--
one by one
I let my hair down
like a ladder
then descended into Hell
I have always gone to great lengths in my
life
Never once cut my hair growing up –
It was a part of me
I wore it coiled
as I would the sun
on the crown of my head
I wore it loosely entwined
with the strands of the moon
Deeply braided
in my Ukrainian heritage
it was a magical antennae
a conduit to energy both radiant and luminous
I could tell when you were lying--
see things before they happened
And
so
I parted and untangled
your deceptions--
the lipstick lies the lullabies
the gardens you had all but fertilized--
the familiar light filtering through
the subterranean tunnels of my mind
Each tip channelling the sun
scratching at the surface of the moon
Each tip a translucent vibration
of the generations before me
I let my hair down like a ladder
and I descended
Everything sacred
is hidden you said
Not true not true--
though you a mathematician
would reduce me further
In your mind
I am still eclipsed
conquered powerless
buried under you
You who like Genghis Khan
ordered his slaves to wear bangs
across their seeing third-eye
Below the surface of my skin--
your original sin
your root of all evil
poking fun at me even now
Once unanchored
it floated up to seek my blessing--
the aorta of consciousness
sending out its arteries--
your veins like rivers
spilling into
my rich fertile soil
just waiting for you
to take hold in me
I who let my hair down
and ascended into Heaven
Every Winter
I tear darkness
from my lips
Every Spring
one by one like weeds
my fingers descendants of earth
wither and sigh and sing into flowers
And where are you, now? I
ask--
you a mathematician
wandering still in that other country
looking for the square root of one
Roots do not seek out other lands--
but grow where they are planted
multiplying like numbers
like tears like light
unto themselves a solution
Unlike your blind equation
where centuries are lost
roots find their way back
in the dark
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. After 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, The Best of the Net, 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 represented 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 2024.
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