Lemur

Romanian poet and journalist Rotaru renders an experimental dance piece for the page in her first book to be translated into English, reincarnating her muse while giving voice to a soul’s longing to escape corporeality. “I do believe you are an incarnation of my psychic state; don’t laugh,/ by tomorrow we’ll split,” Rotaru’s speaker declares. Rotaru dissects the elliptical relationship between psyche and body with opaque, yet sensuous vignettes: “you tell me watch out what you dream./ since the earth patch I am standing on/ has the hue of a man’s flesh/ since my skin’s ever whiter.” Through the lens of the supernatural, she describes a path burdened by sacrifice, isolation, and the seduction of fantasy. In her shining moments, Rotaru delivers sage lyrics rife with primal, contagious longing, as when she writes, “the morning ritual, when the knees gathered to the mouth/ are fragrant with milk./ at the same time the hair overflows, covers up./ its contact with another’s body.” The work suffers somewhat from a dearth of narrative cohesion and clarity, likely a consequence of translation first from dance to language and then from Romanian to English. Read with discernment for its kinetic and linguistic properties, Rotaru’s work embodies the sensations of an alluring nightmare. (May)