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Claudia Serea
In the city with tired bones
With her long legs
and a short-short dress,
spring rushes on 33rd street.
She’s late.
She’s sorry she’s late—
sorry, not sorry, everyone knows.
In the city with tired winter bones,
with her messy hair
and mascara-streaked face,
spring trots down 33rd street
in ridiculous high heels,
looking for the wrong address.
From Penn Station to Manhattan Mall,
she dances with bald men.
You know I’m no good, she says.
With blazing yellow daffodils
and blasting fire truck sirens,
spring shows up on 33rd street,
and brings me an email from Esmeralda,
the famous psychic and tarologist,
who promises me money and fortune,
money and fortune,
if I only click this link.
In the city with hacked bones,
with pigeons and trumpets,
and a Rangers parade,
springs leads her marching band on 33rd street
in this city of diamond bones,
and promises money and fortune,
money and fortune,
and fame, and good poems,
and blazing daffodils.
What about love? I ask.
What about it, she says.
About the writer:
Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born poet with poems and translations published in Field, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, The Puritan, Oxford Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Writing on the Walls at Night (Unsolicited Press, 2022). Serea won the Joanne Scott Kennedy Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of Virginia, the New Letters Readers Award, and the Franklin-Christoph Merit Award. Her poems have been translated in French, Italian, Russian, Arabic, and Farsi and featured on The Writer’s Almanac. Her collection of selected poems translated into Arabic, Tonight I’ll Become a Lake into which You’ll Sink, was published in 2021. She is a founding editor of National Translation Month, serves on the board of The Red Wheelbarrow Poets, and co-hosts their monthly readings.
Image: Good Morning by Edward Moran (1829-1901). No medium specified. No size specified. By 1901. Public domain.
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