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.
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