Maria Jastrzębska
I like taking a familiar phrase, or cliché, and turning it inside out. The first line of the poems in this sequence is exactly that, a phrase favoured by one generation trying to remind another of what once was. I wrote a single poem like this, but before I knew it I had a refrain that started tapping out a book-length sequence which I couldn’t stop. Such is the power of anaphora! I wanted to investigate the peculiarities of my own generation but also to question the categories of a distinct past and present which always seem more blurred to me. I write about my own life but in this new work I’m also interested in a more collective experience, an approach which writers such as Annie Ernaux or Niven Govinden, for instance, have explored. A child of immigrants, I am especially interested in transgenerational trauma and its echoes in a disintegrating world, how we internalise its effects and how that interweaves with our sense of self, gender and sexuality. I grew up in the shadow of war and live in ‘peacetime’, yet years later, here we are surrounded by devastating, terrifying wars. Each generation believes its experience is unique – it is, but the transgenerational nature of trauma makes a mockery of time. So much has changed. So much has not. What has emerged from my roller coaster ride through various remembered moments is a bildungsroman where the dead – of course – steal the show.
From IN THE JAWS OF A DOG
From IN THE JAWS OF A DOG
When I was your age
we kept secrets the way
people kept budgerigars
feeding them sunflower seeds
cleaning out the inside
of their cages
The budgerigars whistled
and trilled to reassure each other
they were safe
It was years before
they escaped
green-feathered revelations
spilling out of treetops
Neighbours complained about
them shrieking
But there were some things
not even the dead
spoke of
though I’m not sure now
if it was because they didn’t know
or wouldn’t tell
When I was your age
through the bristly
tops of trees
stars fell so fast
it was as if the sky
had been swept clean
The dead were asleep
which was unusual
We kissed slowly,
tak potwornie
się zakochałam,
choć wiedziałam, knew
and didn’t know
it wasn’t going to last
When I was your age
we got our own back
on the dead who weren’t
like cats under the table
weaving velvet bodies round
our legs till we lowered them
a piece of chicken even potato
The cries of the dead
sliced into our ears
Their hunger made us choke
We waited till no one was looking
then as the dead tried to nap
complaining how weary they felt
we laughed yelling Wake up!
Jumped up and down together
stomped on their bone
When I was your age
meadows were purple, clouds blew
smoke through their nostrils
If you pissed the ground steamed
The world was on fire
though everyone knew how to fly
As I pronounced the universe
mutable the dead nudged each other
we were going to change everything too
Some were gentle and whispered yes
you can do it just beware
of the dogs
Sure enough
along the horizon stood
rows of men, their dogs’ ears pinned back
against a flash of sky
The dogs on leashes choking
When I was your age
to avoid scorpions at night
we’d shake out our sleeping bags
but I didn’t know not to eat
handfuls of mulberries picked
on a hillside and got the runs
Every morning the sun woke us
Sea more blue than anything I knew
washed us clean though if I sneaked
into a hotel bathroom in the mirror
I’d see a witch her face leather,
split ends forked, snakes in her hair
To avoid spending our money
we lived on bean soup, cigarettes
shared a tsai tou vounou
or glass of retsina between two
I spoke languages I’d never learnt
Words were scents I followed, to avoid
loneliness, savouring each like rigani,
pine; grammar a mountain path to climb
Old women watched us, and since I could
speak their dialects, they were kind
I wanted to bury my face in the folds
of their black shawls
When I was your age
my legs began to sing
Mostly it was tuneless a dull
judder behind my knees
I couldn’t ignore Clanging
which made it difficult
to drag my feet up stairs
Was ice-wind slapping
my legs or something inside
My skin burned legs shook
and ached then just as suddenly
a melody bubbled up so sweet
it rushed through the rest of me
I was slipping into clear water
where you see every stone magnified
each fish arching a rainbow back
My arms my collarbone lifted
and for a moment everything
that once hurt began to sing
When I was your age
I was so in love I didn’t know
what to say when she slept
with a friend of mine
I didn’t think I could stop her
He had no idea we were lovers
I didn’t say anything to him
I didn’t say anything
to so many people the silence
stretched – air, which over time
you no longer notice is unclean,
corroding each membrane
till you wonder what’s left
The dead who’d been so loud
whispered, then suddenly
after all their chatter
even they stopped, like birds
which take off at a single shot
When I was your age
each spring, like nestlings
which fall too soon
mauve and bare-skinned
the dead cheeped
and I blocked my ears
But I still heard them
mouths forever open
When I was your age
he said: there’s a trick
I’m practising where you whip
a cloth away from the table
and everything remains standing
I saw cities of gleaming knives
and forks, glasses for windows
plates loaded like chess pieces
on a board, a universe
I longed to wreak such havoc,
imagined my Mama’s tablecloths –
embroidered with cherries, birds
starched for best, oilcloth for
everyday – saw them flying
until the time I saw myself
(it only took a second)
as little more than a bolt
of fabric which can be whisked away
with a shudder of wind,
while everyone carries on
chewing their meat, raising glass