by Anca Vlasopolos
this is how it will be
and only for those who can pay
the way it is here and now
half a million souls on a rock
farming water from seas ever hotter
shallower
each saint day with its gay banners and papier-mâché debris choked in fumes
each trip taking
a little longer
each boat bobbing in other’s wake
at large no more
squared like terraced earth
only
fish hemmed into aquaculture
only
birdsong from balcony cage
then
ever more
reading
lights
water
interrupted
breath
even holding hands
kissing
in unbearable violent
heat
Anca Vlasopolos has published a detective novel, a memoir, various short stories, over 200 poems, the poetry collection Penguins in a Warming World, and the non-fiction novel The New Bedford Samurai. She was born in 1948 in Bucharest, Rumania. Her father, a political prisoner of the Communist regime in Rumania, died when Anca was eight. After a sojourn in Paris and Brussels, at fourteen she immigrated to the United States with her mother, a prominent Rumanian intellectual and a survivor of Auschwitz. Anca is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She is married to Anthony Ambrogio, a writer and editor; they have two daughters: Olivia Vlasopolos Ambrogio and Beatriz Rosa Jimenez Ambrogio.
___________________________________________