Our padded white rooms
I am
In a room I’ve built myself
Four straight walls
One floor
One ceiling
And day after day, I wake up feeling
Day after day, I wake up feeling, feeling
Potentially lovely
Perpetually human
Suspended and open
Regina Spektor, ‘Open’
Birdie
A dead bird lives here
in a box of threadbare shoes.
It doesn’t take its last breath here
but keeps heaving, up and down.
Here that tangle
curled about that russet tongue
through the gullet right into that stomach
has not yet been seen
Here you haven’t pulled at anything
there’s nothing bleeding,
bare skin that is far from going cold.
Care
Guard it in a cage of fingers.
Warm it with your breath.
Fold its wings.
Carry it through the day in a box.
Let it sleep.
Watch it gasp for air
with shoulders raised.
Caress it and then close the box.
Tomorrow it will be colder
smooth out all goose bumps with a kiss
wake it with a breath and carry it along.
Habitat
It resides in pictures and a tea set
in the dog that died.
It resides in taking chronic detours
on your way to anywhere.
It resides in little white pills
in taking them so you can take it
till it all dissolves.
We all gasp for air
in our padded white rooms.
Classification
It’s a festering pin feather
the maniacal licking of dry lips
the endless pouting.
It’s the insatiable drinking
the boorish bellow of laughter.
The shivering in the bath.
It’s the shapeless prayer
said in front of every altar, any god
it’s the unshaken heretic.
It’s everything you once forgot or lost, destroyed
the blessed body in your grave.
Conception
We tripped over the edge, were pushed
we let go tried to save ourselves.
The perps are at their best when you love them
the love that gnaws its way in
like semen does into an egg. Revolt
will only hurt ourselves. There is no black and white
we flutter with clipped stumps it’s just conception.
There are no victims.
There is no perpetrator.
There is just posterity.
Gestation
Fold in on yourself with your head
beneath the blanket. Rock to and fro.
Take in your own breath. You are
a naked bird in its hermetic nest.
Think. Think. Sleep.
Get up. Walk. Your arms are free now.
It carries itself. Carry yourself
closer to me. Carry yourself out of your body
and totter into me.
Runa Svetlikova (1982) is a poet, writer, student and visual artist. Her debut Deze zachte witte kamer (2014; These Padded White Rooms, Marmer Publ. Netherlands) won the Herman De Coninck Debut Prize in Belgium in 2015.
Willem Groenewegen (1971) has been translating Dutch-language poetry since the late 90s. Work published with Arc Publications, Shearman, Seren. Rutger Kopland selection (Dublin: Waxwing Poems) shortlisted for Popescu Prize in 2007. www.willem-groenewegen.nl