to learn more about the world before you’ll have to ask the youngest among us those who sleep a lot and barely cry are just ripe once the coal dust hardens their skin they start forgetting meaningful sequences they get old, contaminating each other those who sleep a lot and barely cry will show you their heart beating to the rhythm of the recycling centres expanding over collapsed structures and machines it will build you a spiral staircase, warily overlooking the beams, to the outskirts we’re getting old, they’ll tell you, just watch the sparkling spines of those magnetic men rummaging, searching each workshop skinning conveyor-belt layers fiddling their concert-worthy electrodes, harvesting nails gauging heavy vices abandoned on workbenches bending their backs, cursing, and lifting furthermore rummaging, searching, skinning, fiddling harvesting, gauging, cursing, and lifting furthermore just before the heat tightens like a screw in their skulls forcing them to zigzag between ventilation ducts we’re getting old, they’ll tell you, but watch just watch the poverty, a lazy mother tucking in fences, thrift stores, and gambling establishments just watch the defeated world leaders chewing crocuses in their nuclear bunkers watch the rise of the first unforgiving diseases women orbiting around containers packed with sweaty naked bankers watch the sky, the house none of your loved ones will leave to buy bread watch them: the volunteers waiting to board planes about to get pulverised by intercontinental ballistic missiles
By Ana Pușcașu
Translated by the author
Read The Romanian Riveter in its entirety here.
Ana Pușcașu is a Romanian poet and scholar. Her first poetry collection was published in 2012 and her poems have been published in several Romanian literary journals. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the West University of Timișoara, Romania.