don’t steal this moment from me
I want to shape it after your likeness
light it and step within the smoke
that dared to come over you
I’ll dip the ash
in the mere that reached my knees
I will brush your eyebrows
on a booklet of clay – so you can waft them
in the empty pocket on the chest
with every heartbeat
fine particles will penetrate through skin pores
will give birth to embossed tattoos
that will carry you
slowly
slowly
toward death
Marius Surleac was born in Vaslui, Romania in 1982. He is a physicist. He is pursuing his PhD in Bioinformatics and Structural Biochemistry at the Romanian Academy, Bucharest. His poems and prose have appeared in journals such as Convorbiri Literare, Hyperion, Conta, Tiuk, Oglinda Literară, EgoPhobia, Feedback, Singur, Algoritm literar, Subcultura, Ecouri Literare, 13 Plus, Cuib literar, Dear Sir (Austria), Novo Slovo (Serbia) and Atlas Poetica (US), among others. He also appears in three poetry anthologies and one prose anthology. He participated with poems to the ”Muza Poetike” symposium, Tirana, Albania, 2010.
He collaborates with writers from Romania and abroad and has translated into Romanian, poems of Marc Vincenz and Valzhyna Mort. In 2011, he published his first poetry book called Zeppelin Jack (Herg Benet publishing house).