Monica Cure
Winter 2023 | Poetry
Two Poems
Taking Care
A man wanted to fine me for having a cut that wouldn't fit under just one band-aid. I argued
that it did, told him to hold the tiniest circle up to my cut for proof, never once thinking in my
dream, this is insane.
I dreamed a lot this week, maybe because of all the little disturbances. The pipes in my 1930s building needed replacing and somehow my water ways were connected to my neighbor’s and men had to come and see, measure, test, and finally cut a rectangle into my hallway floor, vintage tiles, cement, pipe. I didn’t watch them do it—I stayed in the kitchen. They replaced a coupling and said they’d be back to fill up the hole but didn’t know when.
I’ve been gingerly sidestepping the gap which isn’t big but takes up the whole space each time I come home. My neighbor has started texting me to ask if they’ve fixed it yet, if I’d like to share a glass of wine, what am I doing right now. At night, music keeps dripping from the walls, and Monday, after years, I went for a check up though I’m feeling mostly fine, and received referrals to people who might make me better.
Universitate
Another patch in the human curtain
at the entrance to the metro,
a man in front of me, one step
from descending the escalator,
turns around so quickly he appears
at the edge of the metal stairs, as if
his destination were wholly unaltered—
I want to turn in his impossible direction.
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 Boston Review, Plume, and RHINO. Her poetry translations likewise have been published internationally in places such as Kenyon Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, and Asymptote. She is the winner of the 2023 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for her translation of Liliana Corobca’s novel The Censor’s Notebook. Her website is monicacure.com.