I am the sum of nothing
& all
by Stella Vinitchi Radulescu
the difference
between silence
& noise
an autumn late or
the forthcoming
spring
the nightingale up
in the sky
the burnt cathedral
in my eye or
the conclusion of
being such
a parody
of space & time
melancholia
Spring comes in waves of joy
subtract your body
from time it will fly
free of words sounds
entangled with the last
snow the bird
on the roof
another day another open tomb
the rose supreme
failed to be rose I touched
the ground with wounded
lips to say a word
to leave a sign
of rapture—
the fire grew from stone
to stone
there was
an altar in my heart
& people came & went
around
they are coming
the waves
the hours & the lack of hours digging
your grave
who are you & why are you
here at the beginning of the end
I am full of time unspent
unaware too much of this
too much of that heart heart
who dies once dies many times
heart pulsing
with love
the fire creeping down
: ash
BIO
Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, Romanian-American poet, Ph.D. in French, is the author of many collections of poetry published in the United States, Romania and France. She writes poetry in English, French and Romanian, though she does not translate any of her work between languages. Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary magazines in the United States, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Romania. Her last two collections of poetry I Scrape the Window of Nothingness (2018)and Traveling With the Ghosts (2021) were published by Orison Books. A Cry in the Snow, translated from the French (Un cri dans la neige, Editions du Cygne, Paris) was published in 2018 by Seagull Books Press. Radulescu’s French books received several awards, including the Grand Prix de la Francophonie and the Prix Amélie Murat.
This is a consummate language shaped with remarkable skill, and the voyages these poems take are brilliant excursions into our inner lives, secret things pushed into the subconscious.
—Keith Flynn, author of Colony, Collapse, Disorder
