Public Republic

Kristin Dimitrova

Photo: In a N.Y. State Of Mind

To my grandmother and yours

‘My grandmother and I got on with each other
without meaning to. I didn’t mean
to say that.’

‘I remember how she kneaded and kneaded
with her arthritic hands while I hung around
asking her to give me a little piece of dough.
Oh, get away from me, she would shoo me off.
This was her part.’

‘Sometimes she joked
saying, I’ll go visit the Toy Letter Box,
instead of, you know what, that was
her own joke. She had others too.’

‘At other times we sat at dusk on the balcony
and that was all I needed.’

‘Once I told her
the scientists found there was no God.
She stood silent for a while and
then said, well, I think otherwise.
That is how the dispute between
my grandmother and all the world’s scientists ended
and some days I think they were right
and some other days
I think she knew better.’

‘Every morning my grandmother would pour
a drop of her coffee in my milk.
I imagined she was a space visitor
sent to Earth on a special mission
to take care of me
and I still dreaded the day
I would grow up,
but I felt better.’

from: My Life in Squares (Smokestack Books, 2010)

“My Life in Squares”
Kristin Dimitrova

Publisher:Smokestack Books
ISBN: 978-0-9560341-7-5

My Life in Squares is an introduction to the work of a major European poet and one of the most original writers to emerge in recent years from the ‘new Europe’. A prize-wining and widely anthologised writer, Kristin Dimitrova’s work has been published in 22 countries and translated into 19 languages. Oblique, subtle and witty, her poems creep up on her subjects from behind, demonstrating that looking at something sideways is not the same as avoiding the issue.

More about the book: http://www.smokestack-books.co.uk/books/dimitrova.html