Ma oh Ma glided 
down the white carpet
the sun threw her,
her laugh a flight
of cockatoos,
oh those feathers
tickled open the sternest
faces—even the librarian’s
with her lips like granite
bookends, oh Ma and I spent
most afternoons caroming
between her polestars—
she chatted with the cheese monger
in pungent French,
unpeeled the sadness
from the apple lady’s eyes,
dueted with the CD salesman
about the latest Bartoli.
I’d bury my face in her sweater,
the wool tickling my nostrils,
to show them she was mine.
I dreaded the museum
above all—seraphim scarfing
down her attention, impervious
to my acid glare, and her notebook,
filled with words to be morphed
into the clack of the typewriter
that terraformed my dreams,
but when it was just Ma
and me, the air shimmered
like sugar on the tongue—
she’d spread chestnut jam on toast,
show me how to pirouette,
tell me stories of summers under
lemon trees whose fruits were
kernels of sun,
and then there were the Italian lullabies
rich as the wool she used
to knit my sweaters, and her hand
stroking my temple, yes
the hand of the mother clock
ticking down the seconds until she
shut the door with a whisper.
But sometimes, just sometimes, I’d jolt
from sleep to find her
bellowing at my father, or shoving
him against a wall,
her eyes wild as a door
convulsing in a storm.
Once, I stroked her temple as she cried,
but she shoved my hand away:
he promised me Europe, England,
anywhere, anywhere but here,
and that, my love,
is why I can’t stay with you
in this town where I know
each cobblestone’s song—
the bedroom muntins have come
to resemble bars, and I can feel
my teeth growing sharp.

Julia Salem is a London-based writer and editor who is currently finishing her first poetry manuscript. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in POETRY and The Pinch.

Anastasia Saviona is a Russian artist who currently works in Sweden. Saviona uses photo collages that explore and complicates notions of place, and that creates phantasmagoric pictures of home and habitation. Her work combines architectural and landsacpe images to construct an atmosphere obscures the divide between realism and the fantasical. In addition to digital art, her extensive portfolio incldues sculpture, drawings, and paintings.