and nothing was sacred anymore
Andrei Guruianu
VISITING
What do I bring with me through customs?
I knew that you would ask.
I anticipated your wrinkled nose.
And so, if you must know, Mr. Customs Officer,
I have about five kilos worth of coffee, some scented soap,
painkillers and arthritis cream of two kinds,
ten bars of Hershey’s chocolate,
women’s cotton underwear, stockings for my grandmother,
and a good bottle of scotch I plan on finishing
a bit too soon together with my grandfather.
That is what I bring with me through customs
when I’ve saved enough to buy a ticket
to visit those who wait for me in their old age.
Small gifts, symbols of my guilt packed in a suitcase,
appropriately black and bruised, having traveled for so long.
And yes, I know what it looks like.
I’m trying to replace what’s missing,
stuffing junk into the cracks we blame on fading memories.
And yes, I know that it will never be enough,
only don’t call me a coward.
I tried, I listened to them once when I was a boy
the way one listens to the trees that speak in secrets,
and I thought I understood.
And that, too, was not enough.
Not when I left them all behind and
called it necessary sacrifice.
So you try going back now after fourteen years.
You try driving nails into planks of wood
to make the cross, then sand it, prime it, paint it.
Then buy the fence, the flowerpots, the monument
for when their time finally comes
to fold into the ritual of shovel, dirt, and tears.
What else, officer, could I bring with me through customs
when I have to wonder every day if this will be the last
before I’m forced to light the first of many candles?
isbn 1-59661-117-0
89 pages/$15
Andrei Guruianu’s poetry explores the often tentative line between displacement and the possibilities of living in the lyrical moment. Like Williams, he is a poet of contact. Moments become place and place becomes the contingency of exile, of being “set forth” into the world to seek one’s fortune. And Nothing Was Sacred Anymore explores the paradox of being grounded in a history that has no ground on which to stand.
--Joe Weil, author of What Remains and Painting the Christmas Trees
Andrei Guruianu is a Romanian-born writer living in Vestal, New York. He teaches at Ithaca College and Binghamton University where he is also pursuing a Ph.D. in English with a focus in creative writing. Guruianu is the founder of the literary journal The Broome Review and currently serves as the Broome County, New York Poet Laureate.