Miruna writes poetry and the occasional short story. She is interested in trees, rock formations, and things turning into other things. The poems below are her thoughts on various kitchen-specific crystals.

mfulgeanu (@hotmail.com)

Doubts over the Use of Sugar

Write, I’ve been advised,

as if you’re God’s gift to literature –

maybe I misunderstood but I think you meant

a sort of light arc springing

undiffracted

in a necessary evening blue, you encrust

body with sugar, and let it roll

underhand until old body falls away without protest

the trick with light is how sliced

it is in cities or speech, how hesitant, how like

all things it falters and begins again, and then begins

in such small specificities, whatever

minor improvements it has learned –

to string beads more easily, you dip the thread

in sugared water, then the mixture dries in crystals

and the thread stiffens sweetly

rather than in exalted statements

that can only speak of absolutes and of course

of their own confidence, falling always

short in the face of a single

goldfinch, a baby’s heel, an ice cream teaspoon –

one day we’ll have time

and I will tell you

about each and every one of the sugar crystals

and speaking of God,

make no mistake, mine has already

given and given in all women

all gifts

without pretence

Salt Garden 1

And again, as water turns to vapour, translucent insouciant

crystals salt upwards; their innermost mirrors sparkle,

have eyes only for each other. This since their magnificent

lattice keeps its face turned inwards, its reflections sealed

shyly in its heart, so that all it gives away is the luscious

upshooting of facet against facet. Like a language spoken well

but minerally, all crystallines with their discrete caves

and sharps have a manner of vibrating aurally, that is to say

with an aura; fingers giddily emerging from a fist. This could almost

have been an allegory, had it not been entirely made up

of surfaces glittering towards their meeting lines,

an allegory of thirst on a single vertical level. But instead

is just a thought experiment that fails to settle, strangely

in watery oceans there are already salt gardens as in the oceans dry,

quietly awaiting the explosive jubilance of drought.

Salt Garden 2

And again, are sunrise and sunset not

short circuits of the timely natural

order, how they slip unfelt through the horizon mouth, almost

ready to set alight: an enumeration

of the flashes and short circuits that are almost

palpable the instant before they happen: the issuing of sparks

along tram lines, the magnetic distortion of images

on old televisions, the aggression of birds one

is not acquainted with, the mystical dangers of home

appliances malfunctioning, a thunderstorm that could melt

my salt garden however –

salt solutions are excellent conductors –

a still-life composition with salt garden and lightning –

caught in a glass the moment just before.