Maria Baciu is a writer from Romania. She moved to London in 2020 to begin a BA in English and Creative Writing at Goldsmiths. In 2023, she graduated and began an MA in Creative and Life Writing, continuing her studies at Goldsmiths. Maria writes about the idea of home, the comparison between her life in Romania and the one she has in London, and familial relations, as well as romantic and platonic relationships. Mostly, her poetry is about acknowledging human conditions and capturing the mundane in a way which allows the reader to understand just how extraordinary the ordinary can be.
Email: mariabaciu1803@gmail.com
you see God
you see God on the 172 to Brockley Rise.
the only seat left is the one next to him.
God is bouncing his knee in the same manner
you used to when, at 9 years old, your family doctor
told your mother you were only doing it for attention.
he reaches across from you to press the stop button.
you notice his nails are bitten to the nub.
you get up, so that God can exit.
he gives you a tight-lipped smile and a nod, the way people
give to neighbors they don’t know very well.
you get off later, at Vesta Road.
on your four-minute walk home you meet a fox.
it looks at you, and you look at it.
it tilts its head minutely, as though you were neighbors
and then you keep walking.
you jam your crooked key in the door of a flat
you only signed the lease to in fear of being homeless.
you don’t really like your flatmates,
but one of them is your best friend.
maybe it’s not all bad.
you haven’t even unlocked the door yet but you can
hear chatter coming from inside.
maybe you should’ve stayed on the bus.
my professor calls me a love poet
but she says it with a tone.
tired and slightly disappointed, as in
oh, so you’re a love poet, huh?
I tell her, I wish you were Van Gogh’s
‘Sunflowers’ so someone would throw
Heinz tomato soup on you.
now I’m holding back tears and that’s
embarrassing but no one knows the strength
it takes to not pull at my hangnail, or that
I lost an earring my mother gave me, or that
there’s a Christmas tree in my kitchen in November, or that
my best friend doesn’t hang out with me
anymore because of a boy.
London winters don’t feel as cold anymore.
I no longer need a scarf.
I only exist to make narcissists feel better about themselves.
I only exist in the moment when my hair flips perfectly over my shoulder.
tiny person
after Elaine Kahn
I am a tiny person and I
know your plastic bag hands will
suffocate me before I finish this poem.
I laugh, hit your chest lightly with my scaly
fingers and say, hey, just talk to me, okay?
and your face turns green,
and my vision swims,
and I forget everything they told us in first aid.
I walk around with intentional red
lipstick on my teeth.
my friend points it out.
I swipe the back of my hand across my mouth,
forcefully, like a conductor delivering the final blow,
splitting my lip in the process.
I ask, did I get it all?
of New York and other places I haven’t been to
New York is cold, I think, and I
am a flower in a vase.
could be any flower, nothing in particular.
doesn’t even have to be in a vase.
like a wilted stem of baby’s-breath, or
the mum someone stepped on, or
the random freesia the florist
sweeps up at the end of the day.
I get a coffee from the Costa across from my university
and walk down Lewisham Way.
some things make sense like,
the 177 to Thamesmead is always late.
the pool table at The Wickham sucks.
Bacardi tastes horrible no matter what you mix it with.
I’m afraid London showers are my only source of hydration.
I’m afraid cracks in the pavement are all I know.
Meredith Grey was the original pick-me girl
but she was right.
she was right to beg for the love of a man
that wasn’t a good man, because love is never a waste.
so, I need you to be sure because
Vienna feels colder than usual and the jeans
I got from the charity shop don’t fit me right.
they hang low on my waist, almost slipping off entirely.
I shove my hands in my pockets and feel
something gooey, something that gives
when my fingers press into it, like a rotten apple.
the stuff gets under my fingernails and I
am going to be sick. so, I bowl over
and puke on the tram tracks until there’s nothing left.
there’s hair in my mouth and the putrid
smell of your banality fills my nose.
the whistle of the tram makes waiting pedestrians step back.
I stay where I am, my muscles refusing to move.
there’s an old man muttering under his breath,
something about this generation and their alcohol addiction.
if only it were that simple.
if I take you back to my place
and there’s a Morley’s chicken wings box on
the dresser in the corner of my room,
please don’t mention it.
this room isn’t much but it has crown moldings,
and a flat can of Pepsi on the nightstand,
and a door that doesn’t open all the way because of the bed,
so, it feels special.
I make space for you.
the Ikea stool, at the Ikea desk, next to the Ikea shelf
my friend built, is for your jeans.
you have to fold them nicely, please.
don’t make more mess for me to clean up.
it’s a bad idea for poets to fuck other poets
because they’ll inevitably end up writing about
the embarrassing things you say in bed.
you’ll see yourself naked in front of an
audience you don’t recognize at an open mic night.
I want my poetry to sound like yours.
I’m sorry I say sorry a lot and my hair always
gets horribly knotted at my nape.
it’s November again and it has nothing to do
with the fact that I am overthinking the way your
fingers brushed along my bare arm.
my friend babies her boyfriend.
the words I’m sorry, baby, plastered on her lips,
like, when he has to go to work or
when he says he has a headache when his turn
to do the hoovering comes around,
and I can’t think of anything worse.
so, will you come back to my place?
increasingly beautiful
I’m not interested in truth.
I am going through a phase where words
come easy; my tutor assures me this too shall pass.
I let out a relieved sigh.
I cram too many words on not enough pages and I
don’t know what to do when someone calls me pretty.
I will no longer write about love because I have
decided I am no longer writing about things that aren’t mine.
I’ll write about things I know for sure.
for example, here are three things I know:
- you don’t need to turn the heat on, just put on another jumper.
- coffee is better with sugar.
- not all clocks tell the right time.
what do you do when you don’t know anything?
write a poem.
when I am not scaring foxes out of my backyard or
peeling potatoes in a cold kitchen,
I stare at pretty strangers in my seminars and
imagine what it would be like to make them laugh.
physically, I am sitting in a green plastic chair,
wearing a denim skirt. I have chapped lips
and a nose that’s too big for my face.
mentally, I am a seagull picking through trash
and pecking at people’s expired croissants.
I am not a good actress and it shows in the way
I can’t hold eye contact with authority figures and
often find myself slouching.
they keep telling me, do no harm.
and I try, I scream, I try.
SARDINES
after Frank O’Hara
I am a museum of people
pointing at paintings, saying
I could’ve done that!
well, you didn’t.
nothing means anything until I say it does.
you are a weathered leather jacket,
I am the five-pound note you forgot in
your breast pocket.
forecast says it’s going to snow in London,
but I am already knee deep in April so it can’t.
where is the poet in relation to the poem?
probably doing laundry because they wore the same
shirt four days in a row,
or trying to unlock the back door to the garden,
or in the little Sainsbury’s buying
ginger tea and paracetamol.
I know what you’re thinking.
sort of.
I repeated tomorrow until it no longer resembled a word.
I’ve stared at myself in the mirror so much I no longer resemble a word.
the syllables of me are getting muddled together.
I lost a leg.
I didn’t even notice.