KNOT Magazine
Fall Issue 2022
Antonia Alexandra Klimenko
Childhood
Your first drawing is of the sun You color it round
and bright like the bouncing ball your father gives you
when you are just three What delight you take in both losing
and reclaiming it, together, as you run far through the leaves
with the sky and the wind Now, he thinks, you will remember
what it feels like...to hold a world in your hands
Your mother’s world is of a different light She will hold you
in the spell of her song which will assume different shapes. At first,
you will want to carry it with you wherever you go One day, it will
take you to deep places that move you as she fades quietly
like the melody or the more subtle color you use to paint a dream
Your dream is your portal to the world
Drawn through the rainbow of your imagination—
it is being colored continually by your perceptions
You will spend most of your childhood in its sphere
Here, you polish the moon and shine the stars
and trace your name on fragile glass You wonder
where the blue begins and worry about where it ends
Most of the time you spend waiting
waiting for your father to one day return
waiting for your mother to come tuck you in
waiting for loneliness to leave you alone
The terror of the dark The terror of your song
catching in your throat like a kite in the branches of trees
Later, of course, there is the terror of stumbling through
entire sentences
of being lost among strangers so tall
you cannot see their faces and.
of the hand that once firmly held yours... slipping away
Much later, of course, there is the terror
of losing most of your crayons
Interrogation of the Moon
Where've you been?
Where're you going?
What’re you doing?
How long?
Who with?
What for?
He prunes back your favorite rosebush-
now a miniature bonsai`
This should have been your first clue
He plows through you like pulp fiction--
the next chapter is Poland
This should have been your first clue
He cross-examines your dreams--
some of them escape with only third degree burns
This should have been your first clue
Later
he will probe holes in your stories
(the size of craters)
They all end badly
He will ask impossible questions"
And what have you done with the stars?"
for which you ponder improbable replies
"I had them for breakfast
when my back was turned?"
He will remind you
he is there to remind you
your only safe alibi is death
The first clue is
there is no second clue
I tell him:
a quick strip-search of this poem
and you will find nothing
Even as I speak
I am eating my own words
One by one...
in reverse order--
the rose petals
the stars
the breadcrumbs in the forest
One by one
they explode on my tongue
they dissolve into the darkness
that stumbles into night
Even as I speak
I am erasing every trace
every feature of my landscape
I am changing my name to Daisy
and I am moving to another town
It's useless to question the moon...
better you interrogate the sun
The Bridal Train
Are we there yet?
Will I fit in?
Will our shoes match
Will I be able to squeeze both my feet into them
or just my soul?
Is there an overhead compartment
for my heart?
When I was a child of six, I traveled light
I was the golden girl, the mermaid of my dreams
who received messages from angels and western union
who saved you from getting lost in your own story
who dove deep into the open wound of your psyche
and emerged singing with your soul
I was the one
who lived in a seashell of mystical proportion
who whispered sweet healings in your ear
who called to you with a voice from beyond
When I was seven, I cut off my tail
and planted it in the ground
I sang to it every day, thinking
it would take root, thinking
I could put it on ice, thinking
I could slip away or slip it on
whenever it suited me
When it didn't grow back
I stuffed my dreams into an empty shoe box--
every year one size too small
Are we almost there? How much farther?
I stop to dress my wounds. Instead,
I work on the knot You would undo both, I think
but you are already unmaking the bed
Entrenched in your wasteland
you wait for me to warm your cold interior—
Siberia in a box car
I cannot warm your Siberia
I cannot warm even mine
I cannot warm even these thoughts
nor can they reflect any longer
I pour myself out of the looking glass--
unravel the blue translucent gauze of deception
I, a woman, half-ocean
fully exposed, raw, imperfect, in useless mixed metaphor
am, by my own undoing
almost completely undone
Shivering and limp
I wrap myself in seaweed
and drag myself across your drunken landscape
like the moon who must forever
drag behind her the sea--
the liquid dream all but drained out of me--
myself drifting away.
Your face floats above me
then passes through me--a puff a smoke.
Your eyes, once the pistons of stars
now passengers of a moving train
pumping iron on its haunches
I have no more legs to spread,
no more dark secrets to spill
or reattach
We have already come
full stop
Arriving together separately
my lonely echo bounces from car to car
before retuning returning to the sea
You cannot enter my kingdom
I cannot exit yours.
Oh; God, are we not the perfect pair!
Antonia Alexandra Klimenko was first introduced on the BBC and to the literary world by the legendary Tambimuttu of Poetry London--publisher of T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Pablo Neruda and Bob Dylan, to name a few. Although her manuscript was orphaned upon Tambi's passing, her poems and correspondence are included in his Special Collections at Northwestern University: A former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including CounterPunch, Van Gogh's Ear Anthology, Strangers in Paris--New Writing Inspired by the City of Light, Occupy Wall Street Anthology (in which she is distinguished as an American Poet) and Maintenant: Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. and New York's Museum of Modern Art. Her collages have been exhibited at the DIFFA (Design Industry Foundation for Aids) Showhouse in San Francisco and featured in Home and Garden Magazine. She lives in Parsis.