Clara Burghelea
Clara Burghelea is a Romanian-born poet with an MFA in Poetry from Adelphi University. Recipient of the Robert Muroff Poetry Award, her poems and translations appeared in Ambit, Waxwing, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. Her second poetry collection Praise the Unburied was published with Chaffinch Press in 2021. She is Review Editor of Ezra, An Online Journal of Translation.
Sketch 4, Penn Station
after Nuar Alsadir
The way the subway, a womb remaking faces, spills Christ-visions, the day curdling before the promise of sunlight carries us in the street, sleep off the drink of late-night concoctions, snippets of dreams around the corners of the eyes, the mud of language caking under fingernails, half-words, anything racked from memory, bubble-wrap limbs, me-ness vibes while breathing the queue, this lacks decorum, in the street, I keep squeezing your hairpin in my pocket.