“The Seventh Column”, “Anemone”, and “Health and Safety”

The Seventh Column

Once again Diderot’s beautiful ruin stands
in the corner of my mind,
the great book-city he described in Les Bijoux Indiscrets.

It stands there with its cupola and wings and spires;
the vast cranes that have been thrown up over the roofs,
the towers of every color and shape, like laments;
the wide-open windows that look out across the city’s view:
and here a rich man’s palace, there a poor man’s hovel,
and everywhere the same old poverty and misery.

The sun shines on Diderot’s ruin, but it is not enough to warm
the air. It glares on the golden spires and cupolas,
and melts the stone and marble into liquid gold.
The shadows lie across the dusty streets like a veil of fire;
the scorched pavement is strewn with broken glass,
with splinters of wood and bits of plaster; the dead leaves rustle,
and amid that universal silence one hears the distant hum
of a city in pain.

Anemone

His hands smell of anemone and mushrooms
on a spring morning.

The sea is as flat as he is silent.
He’s a man who deals with silence and water, with
the weight of the stones in his pockets.

The tide has just begun to come back in, and he’s on the beach,
walking toward the town where I live alone, taking pictures of angles
and shadows that look like things they aren’t.
There are no waves at this time of day; there is only him.
I pretend that he is my father and I am his daughter.
I pretend that I have never been kissed.
I think about the way that he walks, and how he smells like my mother’s garden
in the summertime, before it was taken away from her by the wind.


Health and Safety

There have been plenty of times when I had to fight for my life.
Sometimes it was for my “health and safety”,
sometimes for happiness.
I fought for what I could not bear to lose,
but I lost all the same. I can still recall the taste of all
those defeats, as bitter as unripe plums.

I remember the time that I thought I would die of thirst.

I wasn’t even sure what dying meant, but I was so, so thirsty.
I remember the blood that ran down my wrist,
like the blood that runs down the wrist
of a girl who has cut herself with a razor blade
and stares at her own reflection in the mirror.
Perhaps that is why I am as I am:
I have seen my death; I have seen it, and it was nothing.

Claudia Wysocky, a Polish writer and poet based in New York, is known for her diverse literary creations, including fiction and poetry. Her poems, such as “Stargazing Love” and “Heaven and Hell,” reflect her ability to capture the beauty of life through rich descriptions. Besides poetry, she authored “All Up in Smoke,” published by “Anxiety Press.” With over five years of writing experience, Claudia’s work has been featured in local newspapers, magazines, and even literary journals like WordCityLit and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. Her writing is powered by her belief in art’s potential to inspire positive change. Claudia also shares her personal journey and love for writing on her own blog, and she expresses her literary talent as an immigrant raised in post-communism Poland.