Two Poems by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

 

Passage

 

I am growing older now 

and my shape is shifting 

like a desert 

or a sea 

or even this poem 

where these words line up 

on the edge of the blue 

to peer into their horizon 

 

Where are we going? 

And how will we get there? 

is always a good question 

 

A writer may cross a body 

of work many times over 

before arriving at his destination 

or washing up to shore 

 

Each page is a sky that announces you 

Words are but a flock of geese 

passing over   and beyond its borders 

Always from a great distance-- 

the sound of your own voice

 

 

 

Foreign Film  

 

We travel between horizons  

you and I    in linear e-motion  

one word after the other  

one space to the next  

Upper and lower case berths  

wishing they were one  

 

You: rearranging sentences  

on the Titanic  

Me: mopping the decks  

You: the version originale  

Me: with subtitles  

running across my forehead  

   

In Truth  

we are spiralling through one another  

                            invisibly  

In Reality  

we are sinking to new heights  

   

Wherever we are  

is somewhere we have never been  

Perception is like that  

                  can take you somewhere new  

without ever having left  

   

You and I  

are somewhere  

we have never travelled before--  

our random borders opening  

to a world of shifting senses  

Nothing is as it seems  

Nothing is. As it seems.  

 

Arm under arm   leg over leg  

we voyage into the unknown  

we go diving    into the wreck  

of our fluent Ms. Understanding  

 

(All is lost in translation  

unless  

you read between the lies) 

 

Even now  

lipsinking under you  

with Webster's unabridged  

I wait for your warm definition  

to re-kindle my meaning within  

Passion's tides-- breath's surging surf 

crashing in my head 

A viscous rim of moon     glistening  

on my breast   The Milky Way  

on your native tongue-- cosmic ambrosia  

   

Only the blur of our arrival  

wave upon wave--  

your edited-for-content prepaid departure  

left to betray  

the depth of our shallow surround sound  

                           the soft moan  

of our black swollen   sea  

left  

         unspoken

 

 

 

 

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. She has been a featured guest at Shakespeare & Company, on a number of occasions, as well as performed or read in other literary venues in the City of Light and elsewhere. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France), Jazz and Literature 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 Poet in Residence. She is also Writer/Poet in Residence at The Creative Process. Her selected poems On the Way to Invisible was recently published by The Opiate Books and is now available.