Friday 20 September 2024

Four Poems by Andrea Ferrari Kristeller

 




The Magic Dress 

 

 

 

Under the bed covers, my young one and I used to imagine 

a dress that changed upon a wish 

 

A gown of night sparkling with diamonds on dark velvet  

a golden one with the shine of morning light, matching shoes and purses 

Most had a heart-shaped bodice tightening before  

the full skirt rustled and floated in circles over marble floors  

 

Now I feel a larger mother grants us wishes everyday 

with her wardrobe variations  

 

I guess the dawn dress loses against the twilight one  

pinks race violets blues turn indigo 

clouds line the cloak and the moon hangs like a medallion  

as we rest in protected beauty 

 

There’s the autumn dress in impossible shades one refuses 

to step on later as if making a dancer’s mistake 

It smells of mushrooms  

 

Of the shabbier outfit in cities, I love the pockets of gardens 

the worn aprons of parks, flowered 

 

My favourite one is the jungle dress 

Its mottled green fabric is rough in bark and soft in fern 

Lichen adorned, dancing in tree-crown coordination as birds and silk  

butterflies dangle around. Pity some parts are scorched  

 

The white robe of mountains reveals curved bones and spills 

swathes of tulle glaciers, shorter by the year 

 

Ah and the sea dress! How its swings to and fro in grey or ultramarine, 

how its white edges foam the skirts of sand to the music of salt 

Coral jewels hide and recede in this, our time’s tide 

 

I wonder if the molten core glowering in red and orange 

will agree to slip her clothes on much further  

or will discard us as a seamstress picks off the pins 

in a dress that is done and finished 

 

 

 

 

 

Embracing Water

 

 

The world sits green on the edge of a 

hill where I go and stay in silence 

 

Together, we watch light and dark 

entangling like lovers, all the jungle below 

like moss covering round bellies of bark  

 

We can see the mist hiding nests and native huts 

and how birds bless morning with cry and song  

 

I’d like to embrace the world as it is, even with us 

But it’s like embracing water 

 

All around, you can’t tell if you’re in 

or out of each drop that pours down  

in this spring forest shower 

 

Looking up, I smile at the smell of being 

held in the freshness  

embracing all 

 

 

 

 

 

Field in dew

 

 

 

Across a sea of drops, all still 

trembling before gravity and vapour 

 

walk this field as a ghost 

 

hanging, clinging to shape  

before earth and air and sunlight 

trespass the remains of night  

 

drink all the field  

taste the dreams of grass  

 

transparent translucent you 

can drop 

 

 

 

 

 

Mushroom poem

  

 

Erupting in black speckled letters  

sponging from the mind 

the poem has a woody smell  

−one never knows if it’s poisonous 

 

Beneath, cobwebbed maps probe the dark  

mycelia murmurs tendrils and dreams 

of a silence that is porous  

 

This, the fairy ring, constellates words 

sporing on a white page 

falling in place, circling, reminding us 

of the deliciousness of death 

 

and of how shapes push through  

its surface










Andrea Ferrari Kristeller is an Argentinean teacher, writer and naturalist. She loves her teaching practice and the rainforest.

Some of her poems have been published by The Avocet, The Dawntreader, Erbacce, ASEI Arts II anthology, “Flight of a Feather” anthology, Poetry Undressed, Braided Way, Poppy Road Review, The Heimat Review, SweetSmell, LastStanza, Seaside Gothic, The Winged Moon, and Elsewhere. She participated in the Tupelo Press 30 x 30 challenge in July 2023. Her nouvelle “The Land without You” was given an Honourable mention at Writers of the Future contest (2018), as well as her short story “The Broken Sphere”, (2023). “The Ghost at the Whites’ Hoté” was published in the anthology Haus, by CultureCult Press (2022); “Her turning into a forest” by Globally Rooted (2023), and “The Ocelot” and “Orion”, by Commuter Lit (2023/2024). Her short story “The Ghosts at Yazá Bridge” was published by 34th Orchard, in April 2024, while “The Flock” will be by New Myths in 2025. Her short story “The Drowned man” has just won the Horacio Quiroga short story competition.

The nouvelle “The Land without You” was published by Edunam, the Province of Misiones’ University Press in Argentina, in October 2023, and was chosen to represent Misiones at the Buenos Aires Book Fair in 2024.

“The Land Without You and Other stories” was published on Amazon in June 2023, and its Spanish version “La Tierra sin Ustedes”, in September 2023.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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