Simona Nastac is an award-winning poet and art curator based in London. In 2017 she published The Depressing Colour of Honey (Tracus Arte, Bucharest), which won the Alexandru Mușina Prize “The King of the Morning” for poetry debuts. Her work has been featured in Asymptote Journal, Harana Poetry, The Blue Nib, Portmanteau LDN, En Bloc, and Black Bough Poetry among others. Since 2016 she has been the curator of the experimental poetry night at the Bucharest International Festival of Poetry. She can be found at www.simonanastac.com.
Nova Altamira
A relative September morning,
geopolitical time,
blank passage.
You,
the end beneficiary of the day,
the little fish with gills,
the precarious,
wear your simulacra,
contingency, and implants
on the surface,
algorithmically loving
your posthumanity,
Plato’s cave,
thy neighbour.
Snowballs I was going to the airport by bus. Even in my dreams public transport makes me feel rich:
time is money,
money is space,
space is nature,
nature is water,
water is life.
Why would I hurry?
Exiting a body,
political or otherwise,
always ends up plausible,
increasingly indivisible,
up to implosion.
Somewhere Nearby the Field Stretches
I lay down across the bed,
my head gravitating towards the coffee stain
on the carpet. 100% wool, Berber style.
I read my fortune
in the dregs resistant to Persil:
you will receive inheritance money,
one third for gas, one for water, and one
to call your parents. Tell them
that perspectivism,
normative – situational – existential,
is a thing. From books: Plato, Descartes, Nietzsche. For or against one or countless truths.
Or none.
Like the first line of a poem you will never write.
In reality, parents look their children
in the eyes without seeing
the victims.
Kiss Me
Feel the world with your tongue,
observe how warm and round it is:
the soft skin, pulsing flesh, and untouched interior,
with its dark, sweet flavour.
Like a plum,
pregnant with secrets. Like the mouth of a river that poets call the dream of men. I will destroy it for you, my love.
It is the happy hour of entanglement,
hunger, and thirst. Tides rush in,
algae blooms.
In the seed,
in the sky,
in the socket of the eye,
beauty is the need to place roses
on a grave.
