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Claudia Serea
Minestrone soup
Do you feel lonely
in the city of a thousand horns
and millions of feet?
Do you ask yourself what got you here?
And if you do, do you go by the water
where the East River meets the Hudson
and look out in the bay at the ships
and ferries, and choppy waves?
Do you see your reflection
with the fog and wind in the tall windows
among thousands of shadows
that passed through here?
Do you see Judas, Napoleon, and Stalin
marching through those windows?
Or, you go buy soup
from the Puerto Rican man
at Hale & Hearty
by the souvenir shop
where the American presidents
bob their heads
and nod at you,
approving:
Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes.
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: The Statue of Liberty Arrives in New York Harbor by Edward Moran (1829-1901). Oil on canvas. 18.6 x 31.6 inches. 1885. Public domain.
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