Project Type: The BeZine, Vol. 3, Issue 2, November 2016

Poison

I don’t know what it is but very ill-
intended. Surely a woman must belong to it.
And something like a laughter.

I am rotating the city on me,
rotating my beauty. That’s that!
Many keys, small keyholes whirling.

Gazes cannot be all in vain. And the answer?
Merely a jeer.
The vase hugs and kills me, can’t breathe.

Now my features – even with the best intentions –
cannot be called beautiful.
And her? The girl? Her trendy perfume

is Poison. For me a real poison indeed.
And the vase?
It hugs and kills me.

But what am I to do without?

– written and translated by Kinga Fabó

Én nem tudom, mi ez, de nagyon rossz-
indulatú. Biztosan nő tartozik hozzá. Meg
valami nevetésféle.

Járatom magamon a várost egyfolytában:
körbeforgatom szépségem.
Az ám! Sok kicsi kulcs. Tekintet nem
veszhet kárba. És a válasz?
Egy gúnykacaj.
Szorít a váza.

Arcvonásaim most még a legjobb
indulattal sem mondhatók szépnek.
És ő? A lány? Divatos illata
Poison. Nekem erős méreg.
És a váza?
Megöl a szorítása.

De mi lesz nélküle?

© Kinga Fabó

no filigree angels

the Christmas tree
at the gates
of this remote place
where gods
are others than God
echoes
my grandmother’s
in another country
in another century

no opaline baubles
or streams of
sparkling garlands
no filigree angels
or silver star
on the top
just nuts
wrapped in foil
small apples
cotton wool snow
to hide
the scarceness of branches

and here
in this distant country
where women dress
in waves of colour
I sense her again
the warmth
of the oven fire
and the basil scent
of her gown
when she stroked
my forehead
and chanted
to free me
from the evil eye

© Aprilia Zank

Love On the Wall

She sat on the river bank with
easel, paints and brushes
waiting to capture blushing clouds,
the heather great mountain
brooding over ripe green fields,
and the blues of the river
swirling our secrets to the sea.

She picks up a brush, dips
it into the puddles of colour, water
transferring, creating an image
of the paths we trod as girls
sleeping for our feet to inscribe secrets.

When I came she had framed it
in silver, protected it with glass,
and as we parted gave it to me.
Seated I look up, it hangs at eye level
and I see the home we shared
its life transferred to my foreign wall.

© Carolyn O’Connell

call me

call me when you’ll be old
so old that the only thing making sense to your tired hands
will be to open the windows during sunrise
and to latch them back at dusk,
when any name you’d call
will taste round and salty in your voice
when it will scratch the silence
call me when you will have called
all else on the face of earth
and when the only name left to be called will be mine.
call me,
and I will come and curl at your feet and warm them up
and make them remember the cubic stones
of paths we took only in my imagination
and the trickle of water carrying down the road
autumn leaves that never saw November in their lives.
call me when you’ll be old,
so old that eggshells of sparrows will look like coffins
from which death escaped and feeds on earthworms and flies,
and I will come and wonder by your side
of how suddenly water will spring from the wooden doors of cupboards
mirroring the flow of words from some apocryphal gospel
yet undiscovered.
but above all, call me when you’ll be old
when the mere exercise of remembering me will exhaust you
call my name,
as small and insignificant and lacking substance as it may seem
and I will come and finally hold your hands
and nest my breath in them
and I will tell you a story about a love that wasn’t love,
a time that wouldn’t flow
and stardust.

© Liliana Negoi

In time . . .

Against all ponderable odds
the sky is blue today,
a blue as deep as that of God’s
forgotten depths of heaven,
one could say.

You look at me, I look at you
and none of us does speak –
the morning silence (nothing new)
allows a smile to blossom
and to sneak

into the middle of our thoughts,
and suddenly we blink,
and three imponderable dots
of colour and of meaning
let us sink

in memories of youth and lo!
the years have never passed.
We’re young again, though old, and so
the blue above has never
been so vast.

© Liliana Negoi