TWO POEMS by Monica Cure

by Monica Cure / Thursday, 11 April 2024 / Published in ISSUE 29

MONTH TO MONTH

I do it on purpose, I think. I’ve been without
a phone plan for years now and every month
I forget it’s time to pay until I can’t return
a call or a street won’t show up. My map’s frozen
and I’m nowhere on it. I imagine I’ve run away
to a forest whose dark trees blanketed in snow
make the perfect fort. I’ve decided to live here.
For an hour or so no one can find me, not even
those who aren’t calling

OFF SEASON

At the beach, instead of the book I brought,
I turn the pages of my longing

I thought I could be alone
in this dusty seaside town

Summer kitchens witness every single
passerby

Water is expensive, a banana is a meal

A door ajar off the sidewalk
frames an old man in the bluish glow
of a slot machine

I want to quietly close it
but don’t come closer

For three nights, the train sounds of leaving
grow heavier and heavier, headed
straight for my chest

The last morning, my coffee is salty,
I pack up my souvenirs of sand

When I look out the scratched train window,
it is the landscape of my longing

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About Monica Cure

Monica Cure is a Romanian-American poet, writer, and translator currently based in Bucharest. She is a two-time Fulbright grantee and her poems have appeared internationally in journals such as Poetry Northwest, Salamander, and Boston Review. Her poetry translations likewise have been published internationally in Kenyon Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2023 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for her translation of Liliana Corobca’s novel The Censor’s Notebook.