Mihaela Moscaliuc
3 poems
Fellchaser
The once-reputed springs of the Ozarks are mostly dried altars,
the myth of their curative power a tourist anecdote,
but creeks still furrow
the rugged wooded hills and when
after I barrage one stream
first with hands then face,
memories I’d scrubbed away return
and I’m in the Romanian schoolyard, icicles stuck to palms,
palms stuck to checks, and teacher
leaning over my shoulder, whispering
Apprenticing yourself to a bit of suffering, aren’t you.
fellchaser, n. from fell, to cause to fall by delivering a blow + molechaser, a low swooping throw of a boomerang (Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, 170).
Heartmoor
How many times will you return changed
to a place unchanged and not
kneel to wipe the cobblestone
with your hem, loosen
the dandelion from the crack,
consume it whole,
on the spot?
heartmoor, n. from heart + moor, to tie a boat to the anchor (Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, 151).
Énouement
The way I knew
when you wouldn’t
write her back for weeks, but each day
moved the letter from this woman
you so loved
one breast pocket to another
and made sure you had enough button-downs
though you were a t-shirt guy
and in winter you wore
your oversized woolen coat
even inside
to be close to its pocket,
that writing will be a kind of vigil.
énouement, n. from Fr. énouer, to pluck defective bits from a stretch of cloth + Fr. dénouement, final part of a story: the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future (Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, 103).
Mihaela Moscaliuc is the author of Heartmoor (forthcoming from Alice James Books); Cemetery Ink (2021) and Immigrant Model (2015), both from University of Pittsburgh Press; and Father Dirt (Alice James Books, 2010). She is the translator of Liliana Ursu’s Clay and Star (Etruscan Press, 2019) and Carmelia Leonte’s The Hiss of the Viper (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2014). Moscaliuc is translator editor for Plume and teaches at Monmouth University in New Jersey.