Self-Portraits at Sofia City Art Gallery
In another life,
I’m a painter like Emil Stoychev,
though today I’m just a stranger
in a foreign city.
After seeing posters on kiosks
and the sides of buses
for almost two weeks,
I make my way to the gallery,
where the woman takes my 10-leva bill,
hands me back two,
and I enter expecting a crowd,
but find myself alone
on this Friday afternoon.
I stop at a series of self-portraits.
In one, Stoychev looks like he’s in the hospital,
wearing a bright red shirt carved of wood.
The earth hovers above him.
In another,
his eyes are blank without pupils.
And finally, the one from the poster
of the artist holding an artichoke
and wearing a monocle.
The gallery is dim,
each painting spotlighted,
with quotes by Stoychev:
Imagination is my bloodstream.
Everything good is created in solitude.
Afterwards, I wander to the square
in front of the National Theater,
where a man belts out Radiohead’s “Creep”
and I drop the remaining two leva
in his guitar case.
In another life,
I’m a busker with a beautiful voice.
*
One Small Step
On the sidewalk outside
the language school,
the German girl Nathalie steps
in wet cement,
from a newly repaved square
marked only by
a broken piece of plywood
the shape of her tennis shoe
like an astronaut’s footprint
on the moon.
“You’ve left your mark
in Sofia,” I say,
joking how we could’ve
pressed our handprints
like movie stars at Mann’s Chinese Theater,
not sure if she gets
the reference
before she heads off
to the metro station
and I head home
in the other direction.
The next day,
I see that more
astronauts
have landed on this moon
one small square
of sidewalk,
one giant mess
of cement
and the wooden divider
has been completely
knocked down,
the freshly dry slab
trampled on,
leaving only
a crater.
*
Clint Margrave is the author of the poetry collections Salute the Wreckage, The Early Death of Men, and most recently, Visitor, all from NYQ Books. He is also the author of the novel Lying Bastard and editor of Requiem for the Toad: Selected Poems of Gerald Locklin (NYQ Books). His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Sun, Rattle, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. He recently served as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Bulgaria, living in Sofia, and teaching creative writing at Sofia University.
