Thursday, 23 October 2025

One Poem by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

 






NUMBER 9 NUMBER 9 NUMBER 9 NUMBER 9



We are experiencing technical difficulties and are unable to return to our


regularly scheduled program. Please be patient while your poems are being


scanned You are being deep-cleaned and optimized for better speed God


speed. Impromptu grimaces and abusive exclamations are frowned upon .


Email and Facebook smiley faces will be provided for you.. Broken hearts


are offered only to those who don’t already have one and can’t prove they


are deserving. You are being monitored for your own protection. My next


comment is blocked for my own safety NUMBER 9NUMBER 9NUMBER


After you have stripped down to the bare E-ssentials, please remove any


jewelry, any dentifrice, any and all expression before forming a dotted line.


Elevator music is being piped in for your easy listening. .Violins and chamber


music are no longer permitted. Tears threaten performance and stability and


cannot be tolerated NUMBER 9 NUMBER NUMB Your registry is at


damage level. 2025 errors have been detected. System related errors affect all


active users and therefore must be eliminated. JFK1963 errors, Martin Luther


King 1966 errors, Gandhi 1948 Elevator music is being piped in for your easy…


No, that is not gas you smell. Chamber music is no longer permitted. Tears


threaten performance and stability and cannot be tolerated. No, that is not gas.


There is no exit. Please stand by. Please stand   by me . Due to circumstances


beyond our control     we are     unable       to            return.










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. 

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