Soon Enough
I make ready for seeing
the doctor,
bright streams of water broken into droplets
tie up the lines of my body.
In fact I make ready
for you –
soon enough you’ll be back
and your kisses will skid
on my smooth level body,
still sick.
Beyond repair
Beyond repair
my body
a shelf the doorknob knocks against day after day.
The bus crawls
The bus crawls
through the charred Sunday air.
A Sunday in autumn.
A woman gets on, tiny baby in arms,
wedged between belly and breasts.
Leaves are falling.
The driver is listening to the Liturgy on the radio.
Denisa Duran (b. 1980) is a Romanian poet, translator and cultural manager, author of four poetry books: “Fluffy and Mechanical” (Pufos şi mecanic; Vinea, 2003) – which won her the prize for debut from the Association of Writers in Bucharest and also from the Romanian Writers Union, Brașov branch; “Omul de unică folosință / Disposable People” (bilingual, translated into English by Florin Bican), published by Galway Print in Ireland (2009) and promoted during a reading tour in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Dublin; “I Am Still Young” (Sunt încă tânără; Tracus Arte, 2012) – a selection of which was included in the anthology The Most Beautiful Poems from 2012; “I Am Asleep, Yet Keep You Company” (Dorm, dar stau cu tine; Charmides, 2014) – a book about “becoming”, until the age of 1. She signed her first three collections with her maiden name of Denisa Mirena Pişcu.
Selections of her poems have been included in several national and international anthologies and translated into: English, Czech, Bulgarian, German, Italian, Turkish, Arabic and Finnish.
The Stockholm Review of Literature 