Tuesday poem #257 : Simina Banu : A poem, exasperated, speaks candidly to its poet:

a transcreation of Mihai Eminescu’s “Criticilor mei”

Many flowers are in this poutine.

Though few bear fruit, all knock

at the gate of life

from within this death-shake (50% off).

I know:

It is easy to write nothing.

It is easy to write nothing.

It is easy to write nothing.

It is easy to write nothing.

But your heart is troubling.

Wishes, troubling. Passions, also troubling.

Your mind (troubling) listens

to them

like similes at the gate of life, extended

metaphors at the doors of thinking,

all wanting to break

into the world.

Yet here

you’ve drowned

me in the gravy.

You misread twenty-four entire books

as “sleep.”

Ah! The sky falls on your head.

“Give it to me straight,” you plead.

But who will break

it to you now? Well,

how bout you

plant me in the dirt,

I’ve had enough

of cheese curds.

Simina Banu is a Canadian poet. She is an outsider investigator of the oddities that inhabit the English language—from its strange punctuation, to its accidental musicality, to its meanings, unconfined by the structure of words, wandering and irretrievable. Her poetry has been featured in journals such as filling Station, The Feathertale Review, In/Words Magazine, untethered, and Otoliths. In 2015, words(on)pages press published her first chapbook, where art.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan