POETRY

COMIC BOOKS

By

Ilona Martonfi

Down this road, on an autumn day in 1989, the children left. When they had gone:

comic books, marbles. Carton boxes. Brick walls sloshed with lime wash, wide plank

oak floors. Marble fireplace, il pianoforte. Pa’s voice: “Give me your mother’s

number at the women’s shelter. Otherwise, you have to leave the house by six

o’clock!” Two adult daughters, twelve-year-old son, moved to their married sister’s

house. Unloading the rooms, armful by armful. Dressers and mattresses. Easels,

brushes, gesso. Staccato music, a taleteller: there where the sidewalk meets two

apple trees. Its soaring glass solarium, pool. Sauna. How many memories does a

child need? Mundane reality. Sloughed off erasure. The day, we emptied the blue

sky. Stepped outside of it.

ALONSO ZUNIGA’S GUERNICA

By

Ilona Martonfi

Renteria bridge over the Mundaka River

beside a railway station,

estuary on the edge of a Basque village,

adobe coloured villas: red clay roof tiles,

magnolia trees burning.

Bombing as a motif for a painting

black and white unbleached muslin

gives no reason to accuse

shrieking, mutilated women, men, children,

bulls and horses. Monochrome mural canvas:

I am with them, running,

hiding in cellars, green fields

church bells of Santa Maria

sounded the alarm that afternoon,

April 26, 1937. Monday, market day —

there is no time to it, the bodies,

oxcarts with steel wheels, un-massacred

subjective documentary photograph —

rehearsal for war: “Aviones, bombas,

mucho, mucho.”

People cut down as they ran.