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Exile
Poems by Andrei Guruianu
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Excerpts
Family Matters
It was the irreversible end of the month&mdash
blizzards were ransacking the countryside,
cars idled white capped on the highways.
Hens froze to death perched on wooden beams.
My grandfather alone in the house,
collapsed and lying in his own feces.
When my aunt finally cut through the snow and got to him
for a moment the arguments ceased,
the bitterness swallowed,
and she bent down and touched him and said tata.
No One Looks Down Here
I was sitting in a coffee house
when some guy dropped
a ten dollar bill onto the floor.
I saw it as soon as
it had fallen from his hand.
The guy walked away
and the bill stayed
in the middle of the floor
as obvious as a stain.
I didn’t take my eyes off it
but I didn’t get up either.
About twenty people
must’ve walked by,
oblivious to that money
just lying there.
Some stepped on it,
kicked it about,
and the paper spun on the tiles
like a leaf in the wind.
How could no one see it?
Was I the only one in the room
with my eyes to the floor?
And I realized that I was.
I’ve always kept my eyes low,
looked for loose change
on the pavement,
some nothing
that could be turned into something.
I learned that long ago.
When my grandparents
washed plastic bags
and reused them until they broke.
When my parents took home
furniture out of the trash
outside our building
because it had some life
still left in the worn canvas.
It never bothered me.
It was just the way things were
at our house.
It was the way we threw
a wrench in the unbearable routine,
and it made us smile
admiring our new possessions,
counting our good fortune.
We had no room for pity.
Because if you’ve only ever swam in water,
how do you know it’s water?
If you’ve only ever crawled,
how do you know
that you can stand up on two legs?
We simply did what needed to be done.
Necessity stood in the way of shame,
so we took what we could get,
which wasn’t much,
but it was enough.
At the café customers
kept walking up to the counter,
ordered their drinks and desserts,
traded small talk with the
girls behind the register
then took their seats
and kept to their business.
This went on for some time.
Finally someone stooped down,
picked up the bill,
and asked one of the girls
making coffee
if it belonged to anyone.
The girl said no,
finder’s keeper’s,
and the man turned the money
over in his hand
as if he was unsure what it was
or simply too embarrassed
to be known now as the one
who picks up money off the floor.
I hoped that as he walked away,
far from their eyes,
he would get the courage
to feel the money resting in his pocket.
Just enough change for a better day.
And that finally,
when he walked far enough,
he’d be smiling, without shame.
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