"Poem for Lena Constante, Itself" and "Me to the Poem At the Warehouse"
by Alina Stefanescu
Poem for Lena Constante, Itself
Your prison diary hums through me
like acorns, a pine cone, fragments
settled in audacity, the possible
is the quietest form of labor,
industrious as the hermit thrush who looms
her nest through moments she needs alone.
My world no longer reads itself
without forcing a fulcrum of fury into the line
break, though good/bad guards exist in most
hallways, and the dungeon is there, below.
I keep the hope of you alive
on its walls. I copy your words
along the wooden ledges of the kids'
bookshelf in black Sharpie. I believe
in the power of letters leaving irresistible
witness to the world. The girl who loves words
must marry the books in her blood.
The heart leverages silence against the needs
of the stadium, the shadows of forgotten pietas,
the ice of light on the tree's holy vestments,
the bark laid on my tongue in communion.
Am I looking down on the prisoner
when taking her wound to my lips?
The torture, itself, what you called the least
of it. Maybe the most is a route that knows
ravage. It was your diary that taught me
to converse with my scars, those gaping
seams on my knees, back, forehead, scalp,
the beautiful skull marked safe.
The body changes to reflect its relationship
to the cell; the barred light adds dimensions
without erasing the object. Itself.
Meet me there, on the edge of what I've done.
I wait: a dirge for what cannot die,
what waits for words in us.
Me to the Poem At the Warehouse
with Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelstam, and Paul Celan
Climb the hill
of each other
staying hungry.
You must sew your
eyes open for this.
Candlelight makes it look
as if the hand goes numb
before the throat.
You are the color technician
in a dream warning the woman
who was me before bleach.
The unbleached in-
side will not listen.
The opposite of ecstasy is
automation. I feel something
has passed, something has
shifted in the darkness
like loose dentures. The
words lather my scalp
like a church
who must service
the male host first.
Climb the hill
of each hunger
like a show trial.
Your head is the stake
and the shake-down.
Photo cover by Julia Dragan