One Poem by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

 

Who's There?

                                   

                                          Someone I loved once gave me

                                                          a box full of darkness.

                                            It took me years to understand

                                                       that this, too, was a gift.

                                                                     ---Mary Oliiver

 

An orphan at seven
I had to love the questions--
I didn't have any answers
Knock knock I'd say
Knock knock
Only no one ever let me in
Only no one even asked "Who's there?"
so they packed me off to that country
where the moon sucks dreams from a rubber nipple
and I stayed there
and I stayed there

When I was eight
they handed me a doll for my birthday
handed me a doll without a cry
Deaf baby death rattle
glass tears for eyes
Mouth as stiff as her skirt
in a cardboard box
taped on all four sides
taped on all four sides
a cardboard box
for a coffin

And still I rocked her
And still I rocked her

Don't step over the line Honey
don't step over the line--
or they’ll snap off your head
and they’ll melt you down
for all your plastic truth

Outside
the Pope is playing hopscotch with God
Outside
Mexican borders are crossing themselves at night
Outside
the hems of all the confessors are coming undone
by their own undoing

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned

Stay inside your box Honey
stay inside with me
Let them do your thinking for us

She stared at me through her windowpane
I looked at her pain through mine
I an aging mime without sound
rotting like a frozen vegetable
In the dark in the dark
my icebox is making that awful sound
In the dark
my refrigerator is dying

Don't step over the line Honey
don't step over the line--
stay where you will keep forever
wrapped in your cellophane smile
When Death comes to blow out your candles
close your eyes and make a wish
You can open yourself on your birthday
just don't hold your breath!

When I was nine
I crossed over all the boundaries
rocking back and forth
between moon and madness
La dee dah La dee dah
And so I rocked me
And so I rocked me

In the hospital that other country
they watched me
they watched me
so I swallowed a handful of miracles
all of them invisible
all of them blind
I floated out of my body
I floated into your mind
just to know how you were feeling
just to know that I was alive
just to have another answer

Cross over cross over
the voice said
(They'll reduce me to rubber
they'll use me for glue)
Cross over cross over
the voice said
There IS no division
You’re just passing through

Every moment
(breathing out breathing in)
I stand at Life's door
knock knock
I stand at Death's
knock on wood
Oh pick one or the other! I say
Just don't leave splinters in everything!

Forgive me, Father, for we know not

Every day
the horizon bleeds rainbows
into herself
La dee dah La dee dah
as my own dreams
recede into the peeling plastic
of a thousand melting sunlamps
and I am dying
I am dying

Every day
I stand at my own door
I ask the same question
I let myself in
“And what have they done with my dolly?” I ask
No one could teach her to cry Honey
no one could teach her to cry
And so I rock me
And so I rock me

 

 

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 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.