ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
GRIEF
Five days after my mother's death
I found her cat
stiff, cold, perched high on firewood,
a grayish, furry bark
no tree would claim.
Oh, what can I say of sights
that magnify the loss?
Of tears folding twice the grief?
One death begets another death
like falling leaves descending
steep and narrow stairs of wind
one at a time
one at a time
as if Earth's Gravity and Death were sisters,
twin sisters calling from below.
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
DIALOGUES AT THE BREAK OF WINTER
Some days
the words I claim as mine
bear marks of other lips:
a ring of breath still floats above
an open vowel.
At night
I hear the plea of splinters trapped
into a rib of woolen sock.
“My love,” you say, “it’s just a shiver,
just a ripple through the heart of wood
when dreams of fire rest their wings
on our roof.”
From room to room
a flame of fingers flickers,
but when I turn to look, to touch,
I face the evening at the purple hour.
“My love,” I say, “who left the door ajar?”
Outside,
a tattered twig of apple tree
will tap the answer on the window:
“No one, no one, no one…”
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
​
PASSAGE
​
I do not question as you do
the yellow iris
which trembles and unfurls its buds
on sunny edges of the pond
as if beauty answers only
to the light.
I do not name the reed,
graceful mallard,
nor common sage,
by Latin words of order.
The world is given as it is:
the sky above,
a hungry herd of clouds at pasture
down on mirrored lake,
a field of clover, aster, and wild mint
tightly woven into song by bees,
and we,
amidst the wealth of meadow land,
two passers-by
so different and yet,
so much alike while crossing
the earthly summer.
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
​
STILL LIFE WITH BLUEBERRIES
​
You thought it would be easy
to yoke one image to another
since summer days
were bursting at the seam with light;
so close to you
the porch, the table,
wild daisies in a pewter jug,
blueberry beads adrift in milk
spilt into a murky estuary,
an oaken knot embedded in the plank
--God's eye observing from below
or just a wooden scar exposed to sun?
You yearned
to claim all these your own,
a beauty harnessed by a gifted hand,
but always a wisp of being,
fast, skittish, pale, and shallow
escapes untamed, untouched
like future summers.
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
​
NIHIL SINE DEUS
​
For years I’d thought
that he was praying to a Lilliputian God
clad in a silky tuberous alb,
while cleaning potatoes for winter
Father gently murmured
“Nihil sine Deus.”
Only after reading Horace, Ovid and Virgil,
did I learn from their silence
that Father had used Latin
as one might use a plain tool,
a lever to raise from ashes the
carcasses of wishes burnt way back.
Now, as I walk to the edge of the meadow,
icy winds scribbling on my face,
I conjure the image of Father
as he sat by the door to the cellar --
thin, hunched over crates of potatoes,
a god in transit to the underworld.
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
​
IN THE SUMMER
​
scrape the skin of any day
and you will find a boy
running late for supper,
the lake still tucked
in a corner of his eye,
sounds of splashing water
still gasping for air
in the heart of a rock
deep in his pocket.
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
​
THE MESSENGER
​
When the stranger arrived,
Mother made believe she didn't hear
his cloak's rustling outside,
the bony knocking at her door,
and she went on with her knitting,
faster and faster,
as if the needles in her hands
were silver swords.
​
At night,
the odd one melted into
a pool of shadows by the door
and seeped inside as poisoned mist.
Lost in her dreams, again a child,
barefoot in fields of blazing poppies,
she didn't hear, she didn't feel
the frosty breathing on her pillow.
​
At Dawn,
the dark one crawled, cleaved
and nested in the mirror.
In the morning light of June
she pulled her hair up in a coil,
saw the other pair of eyes,
burning from behind the glass,
an echo to her own.
​
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
​
BIRD by BIRD
​
On cracked flagstones
a sparrow plays
a hopscotch game,
then,
deftly,
lightly,
drinks
the exclamation points
dropped by the rain.
***
A silver knife in motion,
the heron tears
the silky skin of water
and lifts its prey.
The fish,
a glinting comma
between its life and death,
flips
and
curves
in the heron's beak.
Up in the air,
killing is easily concealed
by the majestic beauty
of snowy wings.
***
In the language of winter,
the cardinal is merely
an epithet of summer gone.
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
​
HUNGER
​
If you drop a knife
on the kitchen floor,
a tall, lean man
with an impish grin
on his lips,
will join you for dinner.
​
If you loose grip of a spoon,
and let it fall
to you feet,
like a spoke
from a broken wheel,
a lady will knock on your door
at the sweet hour
of pie and mint tea.
​
But,
if your hands are steady
and nothing slips
through your fingers,
you will eat alone
craving the chimes, the tunes
of silverware.
​
San Antonio Express-News
Sunday - Jan. 30 , 2022.
th
This issue features four of my poems:
- History Lesson (page 72)
- The Silverware (page 73)
- Evening Moment (page 74)
- After the Funeral (page 75)
Or go to:
Volume 5 Number 1
Winter 2021
This issue features two of my poems:
- Tasseography (pages 121-122)
- Regrets (page 123)
This issue features two of my poems:
- On the Wings of a Bee (page 22)
- Keep On Living (page 23)
This issue features one of my poems:
- The House (pages 108-110)
This issue features two of my poems:
- Under the Microscope (page 96)
- Murmuration (page 97)
Friendswood Library - 2023 Ekphrastic Poetry Festival Anthology
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
​
Object Permanence
​
It is there
under the blue sea
of morning glories
quivering up to the porch eaves,
while your hand sails
the diaphanous tides.
​
It is there
close to your skin,
lips meeting lips,
air burning with fever,
white window curtains
watching the rapture,
the fire.
​
It is there
​at the end of your reading
waiting for your return
from a long-distance wedding,
guest to a house shrouded
in last century mist.
​
It is there
behind the light bouncing
from the golden rim
of your morning teacup
to a magnolia twig in a vase,
petals opening slowly
like a poem.
​
It is always there,
the fear
of losing them.
​
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
​
The Names
​​
"Are we related?" she asks,
holding my hand,
wrist touching wrist as if
my answer would pass through
papery-white skin into her blood.
​
"Anna? Maria?" she plays
a guessing game, tongue tasting
the sounds, rich flavors
once tied to a name.
​
I long for the woman before
Alzheimer's took root,
the woman with tanned arms
taming unruly rose bushes
at pruning time, in November.
​
"To last, beauty needs trimming,"
​she would brandish her shears
like a pennant, a signal to
follow her steps, me, a novice
in the art of raising beauty.
​
"Cut at the armpit of small branches.
They grow stronger in the Spring.
Pink Cloe,
Red Rachel,
Amber Fiona."
​​
Names fit for a painter's palette,
now, no longer burning beauty
in her mind.
​
​
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
​
His Rubber Boots
​
For three seasons
she postponed stepping in
the old garden shed;
too hot, too damp, too cold.
She even envisioned
newborn mice on a rag pile,
pink bellies exposed
like raw burn wounds,
the skin healing slowly.
Then spring came.
The forsythia bush burst into
stars by her porch,
a sweet breeze drifted in
on the smell of wet earth.
She opened
the door to the shed.
Light fell on a spade,
on a rake, on her husband's
old rubber boots waiting
for the warmth of his feet,
dry grass clippings
still stuck to the heels.
She knelt
on the hard, concrete floor
yearning to talk to the boots
as if they were small children
left alone in the dark.
Hush, hush.
I am here now. I'm here.​​​​​
​
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
​
​Photograph: A Syrian Child
​The girl,
red dress coated by dust,
face smeared by mud,​​​​​
holds a doll with one hand.
The other hand covers
the doll's glassy eyes,
as if to say,
​
Don't look
at the dead man in the gutter,
at the flies feasting
on the pool of blood
thickening on his chest.
​
Don't look
at the arm jutting of
bricks and falling plaster,
chalk-white hand
that once flattened pita bread
and plucked ripe apricots
​
Don't look
at the raging fire,
its belly full of rafters,
roofs, splintered staircases,
at the flames creeping into the sky,
snakes of smoke spiraling up,
obliterating God's view.
​
Don't look.
​
​
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
​
The View
​
When she opened the door,
the curtains rose and fell
like a bridal vail over a sob.
Scents of pine cones, damp leaves,
tannin took her back
to a guest house in the mountains.
​
The body remembers
what the mind wants to forget:
ex-husband's hand on her wrist,
the wedding band off,
his icicle words dripping,
maybe we should separate first.
​
What stayed with her was
the view from the window:
glistening snow on the peaks,
fading at the lower ridges,
revealing dark, bare rocks--
transient beauty of winter.
​
ELENA LELIA RADULESCU
​
The Visitor
​
Aunt Vera doesn't lock the door
of her tiny apartment in Bucharest,
walls so paper-thin she can hear
the neighbor's dreams galloping.
​
At my age, even a thief is welcomed,
she says, eyes rimmed with the joy
of having me over for tea.
And, what to steal?
Her stretched arms offer
dust specks floating
in the lemony light of September.
​
One winter night, someone
broke into my apartment
in New York City, I say, sharing
my burglar story.
Fast asleep, I didn't see,
nor hear the intruder. May be he
mistook the big dictionary
lying next to me on the pillow
for a man's head, so
he didn't step inside.
Only the footprints left
bore witness to his pause
by my bedroom door.
​
Words always saved you,​​​​​
or have gotten you into trouble.
Aunt Vera's piercing eyes
remind me of times
when words were searched for traces of truth,
nuggets of double meanings.
​
Unwanted guest,
the past comes to the table
and opens the family book of names,
the ink of loss still wet to the touch.
​
This issue features three of my poems:
- Falling (page 79)
- Exposed (page 89)
- Matinal Poem (page 111)