New Girls

They care about their make-up for the first few days.
Then,
all aprons, hairy legs and uneven teeth,

fingers yellowed by nicotine.
The night warden plays with a doll. ‘He never did that before,’ I hear
the worried lightbulb supplier.

Men suddenly become meek.
Damn, we all needed it badly.

Damn, we all needed it badly.

Room of Surprises

I can hold my breath
for a dozen minutes.
‘How old do I look?’
asked the guru.
‘65,’ I answered.
‘Wrong, I’m 70. Can you
do anything of interest?’
‘I can talk with dogs,’
I said, remembering Ares.
The guru looked at me
with apprehension, uttered
a mysterious spell and quickly
left the room.
A woman from Perth
scorched a white doily.

Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdansk and grew up in Warsaw, Poland. Since 1985, he has lived in Copenhagen. He has published nine volumes of poetry in Polish and Our Flying Objects: Selected Poems in English (Equipage Press).

Adam Zdrodowski, born in 1979, poet and translator, is preparing his PhD on Elizabeth Bishop. He is the author of two collections of poetry and lives in Warsaw.

Poet’s Recommendations:

The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life by Richard Sennett.

Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction by John Gage.

Poems by J.H. Prynne.