The Garden of Exquisite Silence by Kristin Dimitrova

The Garden of Exquisite Silence

The white statues arch their necks,

keeping their empty marble gazes

bolted.

It is closed,

this door to the sculptor’s hand

when the stone still

scraped the dust off its face.

Behind each statue’s forehead

there is a message.

If you look for an answer,

you break the head.

If you keep the head safe,

you do not get anywhere.

If you break the hand,

you may still not get an answer.

Decide faster.

Kristin Dimitrova, My Life in Squares (Middlesbrough: Smokestack Books, 2010), 74.

The Architectress by Kristin Dimitrova

The Architectress

The architectress carries blueprints.

Only the slab is poured. The walls

are transparent and rise from everywhere

strictly according to layout.

The architectress has spread the blueprints

on the nonexistent windowsill,

leafs through them for mistakes,

then leans and looks through a window

no less transparent.

The architectress (technically)

doesn't exist.

Which makes the house good enough

and practically finished.

Kristin Dimitrova, My Life in Squares (Middlesbrough: Smokestack Books, 2010), 28.

The Three Lady Beggars at the Book Premiere by Kristin Dimitrova

The Three Lady Beggars at the Book Premiere

We all know each other, more or less.

                 We listen to the reading author

                 with attention.

No one knows the three

                 grey old women

                 in the audience.

When we hear the long awaited ‘help yourself, please’

                 the three grey ladies

                 hurry to the buffet.

We turn our heads away from them.

                 Their rotten smell reminds us

                 of our exit-fee.

They advance without noticing us.

                 Beggars regard the others not as people

                 but as territory.

The three have no place among us.

                 We talk of literature,

                 we will not fill our stomachs with the cheese rolls

                 and we step back squeamishly

                 from the reeking gash into a world

                 that gapes at our cheese rolls,

                 and has neither read, nor heard of literature.

We search for meaning. We came here

                 to treat people to books;

                 part of the meaning came –

to claim our cheese rolls.

Kristin Dimitrova, My Life in Squares (Middlesbrough: Smokestack Books, 2010), 16.