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Monica Cure
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the poet
Monica Cure is a Romanian-American poet and writer, translator, and speaker. She is a two-time Fulbright grantee and the author of Picturing the Postcard: A New Media Crisis at the Turn of the Century (University of Minnesota Press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Plume, Rust + Moth, Black Bough Poetry, Little Stone, and elsewhere. She is currently based in Bucharest and leads collective dialogues for various organizations and groups.
the poems
Cochilia, Black Sea
I believe I don’t love you
for a moment as I lie
with my eyes closed
on the warm sand, exhausted
by you leaving me
to find my way
to the beach alone,
and the steady rhythm of waves
is interrupted,
as if, at best, the sea
has stepped away for
a second, an eternity,
or vanished, taking
everything but me –
grains of sand slip
faster, faster, and the next
wave, just as before,
crashes, breaking
infinite shells into shore.
Romanian Lessons
Godmother country,
you offer me the gift of
suffering. Your history
teaches me my enemy’s enemy
can still be my enemy
and world wars come
in matrushka dolls.
Your rickety tram cars
scribble, sometimes
the distance between stops
is centuries.
Friends leave, dragging
entire generations.
For these, you provide
folk remedies.
Gather linden flowers
in spring, without fail,
for winter tea.
Cabbage nourishes and
stops swelling – wrap it
around your calves.
What’s in your hand never lies.
Buy what you need
when you find it.
Accept also
the bottle of plum brandy
made by a neighbor.
True North
After our fights,
I would wake up
in Canada. It was
still our bedroom.
At the corner café,
the barista still spoke
English. But I couldn’t
recognize the faces
on the money, everything
a little colder,
more contemplative,
isolated, and I had
made you up.
Publishing credits
Cochilia, Black Sea: exclusive first publication by iamb
Romanian Lessons: Plume (Issue 110)
True North: Little Stone Journal (Issue 2)
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