About Cement
& what it means to look bacK
Romana Iorga
Poetry
about cement
Today I want to tell you about
the properties of cement.
You know nothing about cement.
I know there are birds
that fly over buildings made
with cement & there are fields
that stretch as far as the eye
can see that have not one speck
of cement in them. & I know
that sometimes, when we drive
down the highway, we may
pass cement factories & huge
mounds of cement under
the open sky & we happen
to see them on a day when I’m
writing a poem about what
interests you the least, which,
I’ve discovered by now,
is cement. I know that cement
hardens, the way you harden your
heart sometimes to feel less,
& that cement must be mixed
with other things, like
water, for instance, to become
what it is meant to be,
which escapes my memory,
but you, who dabble in
concrete imagery & are also
primarily water, surely get
what I’m saying, don’t you?
I know that we can make
money with cement & bury
bodies in cement but I don’t
want to give you any ideas.
I know we’re fused together
with cement of some kind,
otherwise how do you explain
that I’m talking to you
& what you hear is your own
voice? I know we are
carbon-bonded, joined at the hip,
plastered, mortared, & sealed,
that we’ve combined all
our ingredients to create a more
perfect union of body &
mind, flesh & soul, sound &
silence, left & right brain,
memory & oblivion, words
& their absence, stardust
& plant cells, rock, rain, glass,
clay, rib, hunger & god.
what it means to look back
When it comes in the night,
I am hardly myself. I am two parts
water, one part solitude.
Dangerously close to lonely.
It’s the moon’s fault.
Look how it illuminates
the rickety shelves of my life.
How it makes them seem
empty. What are you tonight, moon?
A longing? A wounded toy?
A city in flames?
Tell me, what am I?
A pillar of salt missing its former
body? A child overcome
by a desire to cry? A scorched
shadow cast by a bird
flying so close to you, it almost exists?
Romana Iorga is the author of Temporary Skin, a poetry collection recently accepted for publication by Glass Lyre Press. A multilingual writer whose work has been inspired by different countries, cultures, and landscapes, she has an MFA from the University of Minnesota. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various journals, including New England Review, Lake Effect, The Nation, as well as on her poetry blog at clayandbranches.com.