Sur la langue & Other Poems
By Alina Stefanescu
Background notes on concept
Tempo is the speed at which a musical composition is performed.
On musical scores, a tempo marking designates the tempo which the composer intended. Tempo markings include a word (allegro) alongside a number (120 bpm) that designates beats per minute. The number is used for metronomes. Usually, the primary tempo marking occurs at the beginning of the piece, but there are multiple sub-markings throughout, in certain places, where light pools, shifts, puddles, explodes.
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Dynamics are designated variations in loudness between notes or phrases.
Dynamics markings are indicated by musical notation (f or p), but some composers include verbally descriptive dynamics markings. Like tempo, dynamics require interpretation by the performer. A piano (quiet) marking in one part of a piece might have different objective loudness in another piece, or a different section of the same piece.
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The traditional sonnet form had fourteen lines.
Fourteen is divisible by seven which is divisible by itself. At some point, the indivisible occurs. The vestigial emerges. On Easter in Romania, people break eggs dyed the color of blood. The Romanian language has no word for fun. The composer's markings reveal the intimate skin on the inside of an arm.
Sur la langue
The corner of my left eye is the hue of the Danube
where it meets the Black Sea of his mouth.
The black grids me clearest.
In the village, shack fires spread
swiftly. I know this among things
a ghost said. One must live the divide
between rivers, gathering violets from other skies.
Of course I missed the opening lecture.
My father whispers: you will understand
when you are older, nothing is final.
Nothing is etched in mistranslation.
Only the hips of the drowned
and the willows
who weep them.
Erik Satie. “Gnossienne No. 1.” On the tip of the tongue.
Lebhaft. Marschmaessig
Bury my face in the breast of fake lawns
and remember. My head in the clouds on a creek.
Silver stake marks private properties. We wade,
rescue tadpoles from patches shallowed by
drought. The littlest child divines godheads
from dogfaced lilies; her eyes depose rainbows
around us. We spot the elder, his ponytail yellower
than a crayon labelled late sunshine; his legs
rhumbaing the lip of the park, fenced
off. What is friendship after selfied speciation?
The light lays golden eggs as we walk.
An innocent cottonmouth watches from
a rock. Your hand creeps in my jeans, warming.
Some animal who doesn’t live here says stop.
Ludwig van Beethoven. “Opus 101.” Lively. Like a march.
De manière à obtenir un creux
An owl-lover led me through a forest.
He described wind, two kinds--
the tornado who steals,
the seasonal who brings seeds, fells leaves.
Twelve miraculous pines,
the boot-marks before us, the exclamation point
of eyes when waist wanders inside
the curve of his elbow.
It was not green yet,
not yet lubricious lichen,
not the joy of soused clover.
I left nothing in the beech’s
muscled instep. Old thorns
of sun burning shoulders.
Erik Satie. “Gnossience no. 2.” How to achieve absolutely nothing.
Pour charmer le gibier
I read that dinosaurs died of boredom.
Light bends the mind to trace its markings
over bodies I’ve known,
each lonesome shell cracking open,
each tinny nut-moan, snarled
by ghosts of what if or but—
the stubblephantom.
I want to hurt
no thing. Not once and not
ever, this over-laundered
green of late summer grass
I can’t get over.
Deny the lineated footprint,
the marks limbs leave as movement.
Erik Satie. “Embryons desséchés,” second embryo. To charm the game.
Avec une élégance grave et lente
The sheet music
design of our days
buried by buzzing cicadas,
the rattle of shrubs without prophets.
A dandelion’s tremble
rambles less than the mouth
needing more
from each movement.
Și buză de dantelă
meaning lips of lace,
to be what we meant
before desire
ordained us.
How shell casings wait.
Claude Debussy. “Pour Le Piano,” sarabande. With a grave and serious elegance.
Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020). Her poetry collection, DOR, won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize and is forthcoming in July 2021. Alina’s writing can be found in diverse journals, including Prairie Schooner, North American Review, FLOCK, Southern Humanities Review, Crab Creek Review, World Literature Today and others. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com.