Claudia Serea
The distance
To get to you, I'd have to walk
half the distance between us,
then half of the half distance left,
then half of the
half, then half
of the half of
the half,
and so on,
I'd come really close,
but never quite reach you.
Years would pass.
We'd sit at the kitchen table
having dinner without speaking,
as we do today,
our solitudes rising to our ankles, to the knees,
to shoulders, lips and lashes.
Bio
Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born poet who immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Her poems and translations have appeared in 5 a.m., Meridian, Harpur Palate, Word Riot, Blood Orange Review, Cutthroat, Green Mountains Review, and many others. She was nominated two times for the 2011 Pushcart Prize and for 2011 Best of the Net. She is the author of To Part Is to Die a Little (Červená Barva Press), Angels & Beasts (Phoenicia Publishing, Canada), and A Dirt Road Hangs from the Sky (8th House Publishing, Canada). She also published the chapbooks Eternity's Orthography (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and With the Strike of a Match (White Knuckles Press, 2011). She co-edited and co-translated The Vanishing Point That Whistles, an Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Poetry (Talisman Publishing, 2011).