Under the Umbrella
“What Can I Tell
My Bones?”
a broken umbrella crying softly
–Theodore Roethke
I stand in my birthday-suit doing the nature dance
under the light and the dark of the moon
I turn in my skin the skin I came in–
revolving with the planets with the seasons
with the broken umbrella outside my door
I turn in my skin the skin I came in
and in the skin of my skin slowly turning
Skin
that melting metamorphosis
that shelters interconnecting veins
pulsing
like railings in New York subways
that protects blood-rivers and other living landscapes–
mirrors I will reflect but never see
Skin
who through thick and thin
records and traces with her zillion fingertips
the history of my life in Braille
who sloughs herself off as the caterpillar
or unveiling onion
then moves on without me
like the moon
like all things luminous
that leave always a sliver of themselves behind
Oh skin!
Sometimes I think there are so many of you!
Like a cat
I want to lick you clean
Like a lover
to stroke your parchment
to inhale you slowly
as I might a fuzzy peach
Like a shaman
to heal myself the way you heal
To take my fear that crawls under you–
to take all the shadows we have together shed
and turn them into one translucent understanding
Fourteen times
they have cut you open
and sewn you back up again
Fourteen
times
you have worn that crimson corsage at your delicate throat—
swallowed it all with quiet dignity
while I was off in that other
country
leaking breath like ink in a God-damn sieve--
dragging my words like your flesh behind me
And still the soul’s
marrow
like my own bones’ thinning
moves through and beyond
the fading bruise of my existence
Often I wonder
what is the mystery of your moving landscape
Wonder
where you and your gypsy violins wander off to…
If you know who and where you are when you get there
And after
you have been multiplied divided
subdivided
split like an atom and reduced to the smallest nth
will you still re-member me?
I like to think
I am a singing miracle inside my Mother’s skin
That you my skin
(oh, city of spandex! oh, city of balloons!)
belong to a family of skin
whose invisible memory-quilt stretches all imagination
That your feet dance with mine
in Kiev and Vienna
That your poems dance with mine
in and through the streets of Paris
That your eyes turn like seeds that open into flowers
That they will continue to turn and to open
beyond this blistering disintegration
I like to think
that at this very moment
you are kneeling silently
with your brothers and sisters--
shimmering in your horrific beauty
in the heavy mist in the rising ash
beyond the cruel and callused glare cast
by the lacquered shades of human lamps
That you are too vast too many
for any one museum
with no one to fill your stacks of empty shoes
That you are as raindrops and teardrops
whose only desire is to find an opening in closure
That your particles dance and hum in the
dark
with the unblemished day of the newborn
with the newly delivered
moon
wrapped in the coils of all ages
That you are as dust and stardust…
Everyone and Everywhere
Oh skin!
What else can I tell
myself
when your so strong so tender ribbon
is all but coming undone?
Right now you are the perfect gift
wrapped inside yourself
while I
(forever in eclipse) (always the skeleton)
stand stripped and exposed as any holocaust
an old abandoned house in weeds
whose intimate scenery hangs tattered and peeling–
my broken umbrella weeping
outside my door
Oh, skin! Oh, skin!
how do you hold it all in?
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, 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 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 2024.
Absolutely marvelous…..
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