Wednesday 29 November 2017

The Poem I Call My Life

by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

                     
A woman must love herself
or who will do it for her?
All day long I have sat within
the loose walls of this poem
waiting to give birth

In this my delivery room
as thin as air
as fibrous as melons
I feel the contractions of time
ebb and flow of breath    like tides
my spirit knows no gender

In this season
I have no name
I refuse definition
I am only a traveler
and I carry my landscape with me

Tonight I am learning
to move through
slow syllables of ancient dark
like blood without a blueprint
I am learning to speak the language of trees
the alphabet of stars

Last Winter my thoughts were stillborn
They ran through invisible fields
where the unspoken words of dead men
are scattered    like rain or tears
They never learned to scream properly
with their mouths wide open

Tonight I will try again
I will close my eyes tight
I will push down hard against the sky
and I will bear myself
unreasonably luminous   and whole
like the full moon rising

In this poem   I call my life
where birth is the process
as well as the outcome
everything is possible
especially love


* * * * *

Widely published, Antonia Alexandra Klimenko's work has appeared in XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France) CounterPunch, The Original Van Gogh’s Ear Anthology,  The Rumpus, Levure Litteraire, Big Bridge, The Opiate, Strangers in Paris, Occupy Poets’ Anthology (in which she is distinguished as an American Poet), and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washinton, D.C. and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the Writer/Poet in Residence for SpokenWord Paris.


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