I'll Be Back Before You Know It
Stepping through the shadows of World War II and the Holocaust, Maria Jastrzebska produces a suprising,
virtuoso and deeply moving series of relections on emigration, family and the fugitive and formative nature of memory.
Jastrzebska's words carry a uniquely feminine muscularity.
These are tense, sinewy story-and-image-poems with words to be chewed and tasted.
The feeling of belonging neither wholly in one place nor another colours the collection with an elegant, often melancholic sense of indeterminacy. However, to Jastrzebska, exilic limbo is not a condition of frozen nostalgia, but rather one of spiritual creativity and perspectival flexibility. Memories, places and identities are weighed up, recomposed and woven into new patterns here, as in the joyous, anarchically associative imagery of 'Stripes and Polka Dots'. Key images such as a smuggled Polish begonia cutting may appear to represent the 'papery, emaciated' nature of identity, but they are simultaneously generative, spawning new cuttings, and new ways of seeing the world.
ISBN 978-1-906309-06-0
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WHY D'YOU DO IT BILLY?
Red-faced men with white hair
and blue eyes are the worst
especially with a gut that hangs
over their belt or palms that sweat.
He always said he was terrified
from the minute he woke up
though his eyes shone blinking
deep-sea diver to hello sailor blue.
Nights were easier, he said, once
he took to the bottle again.
Men who look like that remind me
that he’s dead. I’d rather think
he just forgot to ring or maybe
that he finally moved to Spain.
