Poetry by Blanka Pesja

                  Richard P J Lambert CC



Island Of Silence


Mlč    zwijg    hush

                           I’m muted in three languages

Grandma’s hand softly pressed against my lips
her preferred strategy against tyranny imprinted

Above her fingers —a smell of onions, garlic and fear
the salt of the world wells up
the vocal chords tremble         
                    
                                                                             a suffocated hymn

A woman’s kitchen
                             island of silence,
of inner migration, an isolation 
                
                                                                            splendid

An island of luscious whispers
Sappho’s dusty footsteps long gone
her leather sandals swooped up by archaeologists
the bones of kisses excavated

There, where thyme secures the breath
where honey lubricates the gorge
a poet’s voice rustles in myrtle’s breeze

​


Onshore 
 
 
The breeze is almost visible
on days like this, miserable
happy human dots and their dogs
and their naked sprogs spread
along the foreshore;
              some bored, some battered, some burned.
 
The sun sinks behind billowed hues
stretched into stratus clouds —the fog 
not reaching the strand. From where I stand
I cover the waterfront, like a beam
from the lighthouse, all overseeing;
                the atrocious and the majestic
                the ancient and the futuristic.
 
The sea is too much for me,
               its enormity, its questions, my existence
 
               I see dinosaurs laying eggs in the sand
               I see the shore shift away continent to continent
               I see tireless movement,
               ascent, descent, ascent, descent
 
And then I see 
               our very end 

​

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Blanka Pesja is a poet and a painter. As a senior educator she designs creative art education for pop musicians at the Amsterdam University of the Arts in the Netherlands. She produces experimental albums with her DarkEnsemble. As a feminist she promotes a support group of young talented female musicians. She considers herself to be a neuro-divergent and gender-fluid individual who likes to be on her own. She lives close to the sea with a teenage son and a grumpy old cat.

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