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Coca-Cola
In 1982, in the middle of martial law, when tanks drove up and down our streets, and people died in our prisons, the poet Agnieszka Osiecka came up with a new slogan. Coca-Cola to jest to! She wrote and she won. Communism collapsed. A factory opened in our town, a bottling plant, a German enterprise. It rose up in the suburbs, it was so big, it wouldn’t fit anywhere else. A huge factory, white and red, like the Polish national flag that hangs from windows on public holidays.
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Leaking
A stream is leaking. Urine is leaking. Time is leaking. Saliva is leaking. I have low back pain. Did I hurt myself while bending down or carrying chairs? I do carry chairs here. Up and down. The stairs. The stage. The floor in the old theater is wooden. Longitudinal wood blocks. A parquet laid in herringbone. Dots. Trampled-black chewing gum. I can carry three chairs at once. Would you come with me to Wrocław early summer to bike (I would like to show you) to swallow the dust and the exhaust laughing with our mouths open?
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Would you like to buy an old factory?
In a tiny garden nearby, Jóna Ingibjörg grows her flowers. She has green fingers. Rusted sprockets bloom among the grass. A chimney. Compost. A part of a big white skeleton. Paper-Scissors-Stone. Retention valve, semi-rotary hand pump and a whale bone.
People used to work and play here. During herring years, herring men and herring women brought herring children to light. Bent by the mountain wind. Covered with fish and salt. Now, all this is gone.
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Latest in Writing
A key is a knife
Walking faster or looking back for the third time would have been an invitation for attack. His steps crumbed the frozen ground. I wrapped my hopes around the keys, their silver blades between my fingers. Should I speed up or slow down? Could I look back? A man in a woollen hat. A man in a woollen hat. A man in a woollen hat cannot be that bad. A man in a woollen hat. A man in a woollen hat.
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“There is no poetry like there is no love. There is no god. There is no poetry. The words are just sticky. Like the fingers of a 4-year-old playing on the other side of the street. A god-like child.
Spoiled. Creative. Spoiled. ”