Romanian Hospitality, flash fiction by A.P. (My Perfect Vacation Series)

Romanian Hospitality
by A.P.

As the child of expatriates, I spent plenty of vacations in my birth country, Romania. One summer, a high school friend joined me on my trip. We sang along to self-composed songs of cigarette sellers on the decrepit train to the sea, saw a black bear and were chased by guard dogs during our first attempt to hike the Carpathians and left footprints on melting asphalt on the way to a bookstore-cafe in Bucharest. Though I worried the poverty would be off-putting, she had a great time. Her only critique: Romanian hospitality made her gain fifteen pounds.

PHOTOGRAPH: “Bucharest, Romania” by A.P. (winter, 2015).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.P. is a photographer/writer. Her creative work has appeared in print (Cactus Heart, Rio Grande Review, Hyacinth Girl Press) and online (Feminist Wire, Kyoto Journal, Wilderness House). She lives in Switzerland.

Summer X-Rays, poem by Nina Cassian

SUMMER X-RAYS (Excerpt)
by Nina Cassian

…Despite all my inner crumblings,
I’m still able to recognize a perfect day:
sea without shadow,
sky without wrinkles,
air hovering over me like a blessing…

“Summer X-Rays” appears in Nina Cassian‘s collection Contiunum (W.W. Norton, 2009) , available at Amazon.com. Read “Summer X-Rays” in its entirety at poets.org.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nina Cassian (pen name of Renée Annie Cassian, born on November 27, 1924) is a Romanian poet, composer, journalist and film critic. She is noted for translating into Romanian the works of William Shakespeare and Bertolt Brecht and has published more than fifty books of poetry. (Read more at Wikipedia.org.)