One Poem by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

 

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.