Public Republic

Kristin Dimitrova

Photo: crsan

During the concert, between
Iron Men and Bark at the Moon
the music kicked out at faces
of screaming kids,
rock veterans with thinning muscles
bashed their gray ponytails, teenage girls

riding on the shoulders of their jumping boyfriends
waved overheated lighters.
The stadium sang, sounding like an attempt
to run down the Hubble Telescope with the chorus,
and then Tanya, beer in hand, observed
that summer is good in itself,

and today it’s even breezy. She
repeated it three times, shouting.
Up in the sky an airplane
was passing over us. I wished
I were in it, sitting by the window.
I was flying over the stadium, I saw

the violet spotlights, I could even see
myself on the steps with my beer half-empty,
and I told myself I would really like
to be in my place.
This picture
had no sound.

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 and the author: http://www.smokestack-books.co.uk/books/dimitrova.html