One Poem by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

 

The Bridal Train  

   

Are we there yet?  

Will I fit in?  

Will our shoes match?  

Will I be able to squeeze both my feet into them  

or just my soul?  

Is there an overhead compartment  

for my heart?  

   

When I was a child of six   I travelled light 

I was the golden girl   the mermaid of my dreams  

who received messages from angels and western union  

who saved you from getting lost in your own story  

who dove deep into the open wound of your psyche  

and emerged singing with your soul 

I was the one  

who lived in a seashell of mystical proportion  

who whispered sweet healings in your ear  

who called to you with a voice from beyond 

   

When I was seven   I cut off my tail  

and planted it in the ground 

I sang to it every day 

Thinking it would take root  

thinking I could put it on ice  

thinking I could slip away  

or slip it on   whenever it suited me  

When it didn't grow back  

I stuffed my dreams into an empty shoe box  

every year one size too small 

   

Are we almost there? How much farther?  

I stop to dress my wounds   Instead    

I work on the knot 

You would undo them both   I think 

but you are already unmaking the bed  

Entrenched in your wasteland  

you wait for me to warm your cold interior--  

Siberia in a box car 

I cannot warm your interior 

I cannot warm even these thoughts  

nor can I reflect any longer  

I pour myself out of the looking glass  

unravel the blue translucent gauze of deception  

I    a woman half-ocean  

fully exposed   raw   imperfect   

in useless mixed metaphor  

am   by my own undoing  

almost completely undone 

   

Shivering and limp  

I wrap myself in seaweed  

and drag myself across your drunken landscape  

like the moon who must forever  

drag behind her   the sea 

The liquid dream all but drained out of me--  

myself drifting away 

   

Your face floats above me  

then passes through me--a puff a smoke 

Your eyes   once the pistons of stars  

now passengers of a moving train  

pumping iron on its haunches  

   

I have no more legs to spread  

no more dark secrets to spill  

no tail to reattach 

We have already come  

full stop 

   

Arriving together   separately  

my lonely echo bounces from car to car  

before returning  returning  to the sea  

You cannot enter my kingdom  

I cannot exit yours 

   

Oh God!  Are we not the perfect pair!

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 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 selected poems On the Way to Invisible was recently published by The Opiate Books and is now available.