Maria Barnas Poems

The flatlands inhale. Roots scrat for a grasp
on thin air, a gasp against the window.
A train drags all the landscape in its wake.
...

When I sink to bed the sea lies still downstairs
and the sun is as always ahead.

I'm fixing myself, a detail cut out
of dark water. And later I'll be by the boats,
...

There is a life that withdraws from the subject at
dinner and slowly grows inwardly

and although my voice box reiterates a laryngal
it gets snared in itself (that bird-black
...

She is standing on the edge of what is just
about to happen and the surrounding trees stiffen

straight up. She folds up promises to others
spitting two words into the unyielding
...

Into the city from the top storey.
The streets of Buenos Aires are roaring below.

The city where everything turns out right.
...

July 8, 2005 LONDON - London struggled back Friday after bombings. Much of London was eerily quiet. Bombed stations were shrouded in security curtains, and refrigerated trucks waited outside to cart away bodies.
The streets are stirring all the same. Interrupt me.
...

I think of the man I loved
Do I love him?
How many fears does that make?
...

The town turned round
when I looked back. Excuse me please
I thought you were someone else.
...

Flames are raging round a tower.
A black angel with a suitcase jumps
from a window on the 37th floor. What's he taking with him?
...

I took the table to work on.
The legs came off easily and the top isn't heavy
but now I'm sitting at the window on the wrong side
of this house, the city escapes me. A face
...