Scraps of fragments, teasing rhythms and subtle colours mark Karina Fiorini’s poetry. Born (1982) in Malta, now based in France and Luxembourg, Fiorini’s work has been read at the Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale, at Gut Feeling in Valletta, Malta (supported by the Valletta 2018 Foundation), and during ‘Landlocked, Sealocked – Poésie de Malte, Luxembourg et au-delà’. Her work appeared in Les Cahiers Luxembourgeois, Guttural Magazine, Isles of the Left, Rapsodia, The Luxembourg Review, and Bare Hands Poetry. The poem Ruts placed third (2013) in the Canadian Mattia Family International Competition, and received a special mention by the International Welsh Poetry Competition (2018) for her poem Twelve inky years. Fiorini is the founder of the Luxembourg Poetry Group. She takes a keen interest in the environment, socio-political issues and absurdism whilst working on her first poetry collection.
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Graveyard
Tempered moments
nested in time, and
slim shavings of time regained
bones in cold spaces
a heap of souls’
robbed glances
that last saw dusted tears
in cool summer soils,
beady teeth, rags and empty dreams.
Yorick, you’re the foil,
spare some antics
amongst this waltz of sorrow,
before spring tapers into numbness.
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The Geology of Baden-Württemberg
and just like that
whispers through leaf blades
in the midst of green
– oaks, elms, violets, ferns –
ten-fold undulations, migrating into hills,
the trees see all
the trees shape all
glances into rhythms of ridges and rifts,
he lifts the breeze with his palm,
caresses my arms, my anxious pores
listen the moss rests
tender hands sail
corridors of water
lake stream brook
Freiburg, Mulhouse, Titisee, Schiltach,
folds of lands
dip into the Rhine,
the etched valley
horst… graben… horst… forming