I KEEP FLASHING BACK

Alina Stefanescu


Arthur Koestler, an archetype of the activist Central European intellectual who drew on his Communist background for the antitotalitarian novel ''Darkness at Noon,'' was found dead with his wife at their London home yesterday. Police officials said their deaths were apparently by suicide....the police, alerted by a maid, found the bodies of Mr. Koestler, who was 77 years old, and his wife, Cynthia, believed to be in her 50's, seated in chairs in the living room of their home in the Knightsbridge section. The maid, Amelia Marino, had found a note instructing her to call the police.

[Source: N​ew York Times,​ March 4, 1983]



The wall had not yet fallen.
It was 1983, harbinger
or hope, depending.
I was new to the promise
of America, new to sharing
a full-size mattress with two parents
and a sister in a studio apartment
with no sofa or table or chairs.
I was new to being nothing, the older
sibling of sweetness protected
by an American name. She was our
anchor baby, the born-here child,
the singular citizen in a family of four.
My parents' struggle was not suicide but
its opposite, an effort at life as it lapped
the edge of almost dying, the near of
disappearing, the kin that could not
forgive them. What do monsters
sing to calm babies that fight
a cockroach for bread crumbs?
What lullaby makes us human?
Nani, nani, pui-ul mamei...1
and mom's voice, delicate,
quiet as a hen who nests near
the molding omelette.


__________________
1 L​yric from Romanian lullaby meaning "mommy's baby chick".

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Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama. She serves as Co-Director of PEN Birmingham. Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Prize and was published in May 2018. Her writing can be found in diverse journals, including Prairie Schooner, North American Review, FLOCK, Southern Humanities Review, Crab Creek Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Virga, Whale Road Review, and others. She serves as Poetry Editor for Pidgeonholes, Co-Founder of 100,000 Poets for Change Birmingham, and proud board member of Magic City Poetry Festival. A finalist for the 2019 Kurt Brown AWP Prize, the 2019 Greg Grummer Poetry Prize, the 2019 Frank McCourt Prize, and the 2019 Streetlight Magazine Poetry Contest, Alina won the 2019 River Heron Poetry Prize.  More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com or @aliner.