Poems by Roxana Cazan

A Romanian immigrant to the US, Roxana Cazan’s work has most recently been featured in Poets Reading the News, Flashes, Switchgrass Poetry Review, Connecticut River Review, Construction Magazine, Cold Creek Review, Hektoen International, Watershed Review, The Peeking Cat Anthology, The Portland Review, The Woody Guthrie Anthology (Village Book Press 2019), and others.

Roxana is the author of a poetry book entitled The Accident of Birth (Main Street Rag in 2017) and the co-editor of Voices on the Move: An Anthology by and about Refugees (Solis Press, 2020). She lives in Oklahoma City, where she is working on a manuscript that explores women’s experiences during the COVID-19 lockdown.  

A Black Walnut Tree

We watch the black walnut trees
wallow their faces in the muddy river,
                        spring buds hanging into the branches
                                                unaffected like younglings

& I don’t tell you about the nightmare
I had so this early morning,
                        right before sunrise

when I lost my mind for a while
                        like a mother mourning sons
                        like a hailed black walnut tree
                                                defrocked
                                                of bud blanket
                                                              & birdsong.

A hero is a black walnut tree
                        in the heart of Oklahoma
                        scarred by poisoned penknives
                                                one too many times

                                                struck by thunder
                                                like a terrible morning nightmare.

When we kill a black walnut tree,
we have         killed them all,
                        hushed forest into prairie,
                                                frayed our dear hearts

& how peaceful it is
                        when you pull me in,
                        drive my forehead onto your shoulder

& how peaceful
& how happy we have been
& how this very day changes everything.

^{This poem first appeared in Construction Literary Magazine, http://constructionlitmag.com/the-arts/poetry/a-black-walnut-tree/.}

Speaking in America

Before I get a chance to ask her,

my mother calls to tell me

that she is watching her speech,

the first woman Vice President,

her cerulean dress, the pearls,

the running shoes.

“Biden’s voice is so soft,”

my mother says, not knowing how

to describe Harris’s,

her mouth ready to gulp poison

like a 21st century woman-Vishnu.

In Romania, strong women speak like men,

they speak in borrowed tones,

wear tired faces people call “ugly,”

and my mother feels uncomfortable

with this kind of language,

the way the words feel prickly

on her tongue and in her heart,

so she comments on Biden,

his gentle ways, his old age

which is a compliment,

his blue tie.  

And I think about the day when

she lifted my suitcase onto the conveyor belt

at the airport, and with a flick of her wrist

she sent away some invisible dust off

my blue winter coat, and some evil spirit,

as she was sending me to America.

Before I get a chance to say

goodbye, “it’s the middle of the day here,

my boss is calling, I have to go,”

my mother whispers something 

into the phone, I cannot hear,

but I know it’s a word of praise,

a monument, my name,

an adoration of the goddess,

of everything I have ever spoken,

of everything I have yet to say.

^{This poem first appeared in Poets Reading the News, http://www.poetsreadingthenews.com/2021/02/speaking-in-america/}

let·ter

n.

1. Is what they found on her, in the pocket of her tattered dress

a. as she stretched up on her toes to peak over the fence,

b. “detained” at the southwest border.See Note at Jesus was a refugee.

2. Dry leaves to build a nest, foster younglings, nobody cares for how long, or if the winter blows this year, or how many girls are being raped right now, and of those, how many know how to use a tampon.

3. It’s like an empty room, somewhere, waiting to be filled with family, living apart from each other.

4. It’s like a blank canvas. Pencil in some old limbs, a pile of letters stuck up high. No one ever finds out.

5. They couldn’t get her to tell them her name.

a. as if she forgot her voice in line at the border,

b. as if her voice is a cello with broken strings,

c. as if writing it down would mean undoing the love of home/country,

d. as if

6. This is not a pity poem, but a scaffolding, a fuselage, an engine,

a. churning roadside graves, documenting the aftermath,

b. returning to the border like a needle in the seam,

c. the purling of swaddling cloth.

7. This is exactly what poetry is supposed to be about.

^{This poem first appeared in The Windsor Review, https://ojs.uwindsor.ca/index.php/windsor_review/issue/view/579/91}

cover foto: Unsplash/Jr Korpa