Lucia Cherciu
A Passageway at the Asylum
Van Gogh painted wherever he was,
not worrying about food or abode,
disregarded poverty
and rumbling sounds,
slogged away
in the cold of his room;
instead, he decorated
with iridescent reds, purples,
intense blues of irises—
even when painting in the asylum
with its square lines, constricting
perspective, misleading sense of depth
masking the frames within frames
within the bile green of fear collapsing.
Bio
Lucia Cherciu is a Professor of English at SUNY Dutchess in Poughkeepsie, NY, and she writes both in English and in Romanian. Her poetry appeared in Connecticut Review, Connotation Press, Cortland Review, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, Memoir, Off the Coast, Paterson Literary Review , The Prose-Poem Project, Spillway, Oglinda Literară, Pro Saeculum, Salonul Literar, Timpul, Hyperion, Contrapunct, Astra, and elsewhere. She is the author of two books of poetry: Lepădarea de Limbă (The Abandonment of Language), Editura Vinea 2009, and Altoiul Râsului (Grafted Laughter), Editura Brumar 2010.