Leslaw Nowara


Russian roulette

I throw the dice
every time I throw it, it comes out six

every time I throw
the dice at the window
six come out

six women come out
and crying

every time I throw
comes out 
my mother and my wife
my daughter my sister my mother-in-law
I don't know the sixth one

six times I throw the dice
I missed the sixth one
why is she crying

the sixth woman I don't know
is the last

The sixth is meant
for me

The sixth is for me

there are no more bullets



Only

When I feel like going to the sea, I go
in the opposite direction. I take a room with a balcony and a view
to the mountains. I go to the window, on the balcony and see the sea. Covered 
only by the mountains.



Shame

At my father-in-law's funeral
my brother-in-law's four-year-old daughter
asks my mother-in-law
- And when are you going to die, Grandma?

But she doesn’t get
an answer

It's a shame
that a woman
who is almost eighty years old
can't answer a child
to such a simple question

Leslaw Nowara was born in Gliwice (Poland) in 1963. He is a lawyer by education, a graduate of the Silesian University in Katowice.

He is a poet, aphorist, columnist and literary reviewer who made his debut in the literary press in 1983.

He has published nine volumes of poetry: Green Love, House of Green Windows, The Third Eye, Russian Roulette, Cocoon, Quietdark, Dot and Line, The Dark Side of Light (selected poems), and The Whale's Bone; and four volumes of literary miniatures (aphorisms and epigrams): The World According to Ludek, The Big Little Ludek, Sentences with a Dot, and Ludek the Fatalist.

A member of the Polish Writers' Association, he lives in Gliwice (Poland).

 
 

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