Irina Frolova: ‘Матрешка’ (Matryoshka)
Irina Frolova reading ‘Матрешка’
| The small one | ||
| wears |
an emerald tutu Sugar Plum Fairy dust in her hair; swans dance in her eyes: flight or fight. |
|
| The bigger one | ||
| wears |
those hard-to-break-in shoes of a first-born and that older-than-is look on her face; Медовик in her hands and a cat at her feet. |
|
| I | ||
| wear |
my mother’s love on my shoulders in wool roses: green, red and purple; underneath this beautiful платок my bones shiver with lost hopes and broken families; voices of our abusive partners poison me still. |
|
| My mother | ||
| wears |
her wounds with grace, her mother’s smothering words held in her pocket, never too far from that heavy-handed care. |
|
| My mother’s mother | ||
| wears |
many coats some are as old and heavy as World War 2, as thin as her own mother’s patience, as inexplicable as life, too hard to carry or leave behind. |
|
Glossary and transliteration
Матрешка: (matri’oshka) a Russian doll
Медовик: (meda’vik) a Russian honey cake
платок: (pla’tok) a head scarf
Irina Frolova is a Russian-born Australian poet who lives on Awabakal land. Irina has a degree in philology from Moscow City Pedagogical University, and is currently studying psychology at Deakin University. Her work has appeared in Not Very Quiet, Australian Poetry Collaboration, Baby Teeth Journal, and The Blue Nib. She is working on a bilingual pocketbook of poems to be published by Flying Island Books/ASM/Cerberus Press later in 2020.