Emma's Fuses
Introducing a Rising Voice: Three Poems in Translation
"...the poet unlocks existence from nothingness through the search for truth—and the authenticity—of lived experience, even through self-destruction and renewal, through rebirth under the enchantment of eternal love. Harnessed to the yoke of unexpected realities, piercing things with a direct gaze, she steers her (poetic) breath toward the thawing of her own wounds—painful, necessary, inevitable."
Olimpiu Nușfelean’s Commentary on Fitiluri by Emma Mihăescu
Introducing Emma Mihăescu
As difficult as I find translating literature—especially poetry—it pales in comparison to introducing the poet you’ve struggled to translate. Especially when that poet is alive, happens to be one of your best friends, and has supported your work from the very beginning.
I could give you her biography—and I will, at the end of this post. But for now, I want to begin with a more personal note.
Let me “pet the dog,” as the screenwriters say, and tell you this: Emma has the humility of André 3000. When I told her I wanted to write this post and translate some of her poems because, to me, she is one of the greatest Romanian poets of her generation, she simply said she was content if her work could touch even one soul deeply. She doesn’t care much for the exposure—what moved her most was knowing that her Portuguese friend could now read her poems through my translation.
But, my dear Netherwalkers, I’m not sharing her work with you because she’s great (though she is), or because she’s my friend (though I’m lucky she is). I’m sharing her work because, in her poems, the everyday world is turned inside out. A seemingly banal life becomes grotesque, dreamlike, and uncanny—something I believe will resonate with all of you.
As Noemi Sabo wrote for Mișcarea Literară, Emma Mihăescu is “a fluid and vital presence in contemporary Romanian poetry, unafraid of external constraints, and emerges as a true fitil—a fuse—just like her debut volume.”
Now, on to the poetry. I’ve embarrassed Emma enough.
Friday at 06:45 in the Bucharest unwritten
line 1 is no line
it’s a cursed circle
turns into 10 before you know it
and only when it runs backwards
defying math, logic, anything
line 1’s circle is tightly held
by another circle, one of people
wobbling on the platform
Half-eaten pretzel in hand
with a spirit breaming or spent
with a battery full or spent
everything waits to be written
at the tax office blank forms will be laid
out
children will hand in untouched assignments at school
the world will drink pepsi from bottles
on which nothing will be written
all wait to appear from the void
in the hell of the blank page
all the letters struggle beneath the white of eyes
the poet of the city is, of course, a drunk
he’ll wake up around 11 or 12
go to the supermarket
buy four bottles to last the weekend
grab some cabbage rolls from his mother
finally wash his long locks
which have forgotten the time he started going bald
and fight to live one more day
he’ll draw from his reserve
go back to bed
and in the hell of the blank page
Monday will come god knows when.
the fourth poem you never wrote me
I saw you on the street on January 1st
your heart was still beating in the neck of the bottle
your eyes were so beautiful
so smeared with mascara, so blind
to everything the world might have meant
your fingers were shivering I wanted to be your gloves
I remember them, they were like you
lost, tireless, radiant
your mind was trembling and I wanted to be your soul
your breath scared off the glue-sniffers
in the parking lot at Mega Image Armenească
lit up the billboards at the Stock Exchange
and restored the Star of Romania building
the one you couldn’t see, but knew
because it was your brick and reinforced concrete twin
you got on the 70
that driver had no idea what he was carrying
—does this earth even suspect who walks upon it?—
and I said nothing
because you were too gorgeous to disturb
the days passed like subway trains
like episodes in a three-season series
like the flu
and I’m left with nothing from this year
except your eyes on January 1st
when it was cold as hell outside
timber by timber
I doze off in peace my skin still aching
peaceful in my house at the edge of the forest
the sky is red, my flowers are red
red, too, my veins the ink the bruises
I erased a whole color from the world
just to lie to myself that I never looked into your eyes
nothing breaks this silence
warm as the day you suddenly
grabbed my hand in the middle of the street
cars whispered around us
and your eyes screamed only let’s get out of here
you knock at the door—I flinch
I know it’s you—only you don’t know where I’ve ended up
I dressed myself in rags, you say
I put ash on my head, you say
and I ask why you came today of all days
when I burned, timber by timber, in my mind
all thy churches
Some biographical notes
Emma was my classmate at Saint Sava National College, Bucharest, then went on to complete her studies at the Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, as well as the Master’s program in Literary Studies at the same university. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Doctoral School of Letters, University of Bucharest, working on a dissertation about the works of Mircea Cărtărescu, and teaches Romanian at two high schools in the capital, where she battles and befriends the younger generation.
She has published poems and reviews in various issues of Mișcarea Literară magazine, as well as in Poesis, Caiete Silvane, Neuma, and Graiul Maramureșului. Her first volume of poetry, Fitiluri (Fuses), was published in 2024 by the prestigious Charmides publishing house in Bistrița, following her win of the manuscript prize at the George Coșbuc National Poetry Festival.
Emma is a devout believer in the power of literature. The first quote of hers I misremember goes something like this: we’ll only be fully real when someone writes about us. She said it during a Literature class presentation in the eleventh grade. Not quite in those words—but that’s how it stayed with me.
