Claudia Coleman is a translator and writer of fiction and poetry. Her poetry has appeared in Write to Meow (Grey Wolfe Pub.), The Blotter Magazine, and Edge of Humanity Magazine; and her fiction in Thin-Skin Literary Magazine and Arlington Literary Journal (forthcoming Dec 2026). She has published several articles in Revue des Science Humaines and other scholarly journals, as well as two book translations from the French, both by Stanford Univ. Press. She lives in San Luis Obispo, CA with her family and two cats.
Romani Rhapsody
Summer in Arles. The south of France so full of itself—the Saturday market, Alyscamps, Roman sarcophagi, the park with van Gogh’s head (sans ear), les Arènes, the Undertaker’s café, Arlésiennes in long summer dresses, the olives, the thyme, salade Niçoise. The Camargue not too far, and at the seashore, Sainte Marie de la Mer, the Roma pilgrimage site.
Not far from where we lived in Arles, a Roma encampment had taken root. Some evenings the sound of their drums echoed in the distance. Roma ladies strolled through town, their feet kicking the flounces of their skirts with every step.
The sun was hot that day and the church bells tolled out their plaintive three-note melody. In front of the Tobacconist, an elderly gentleman stood mesmerized, unable to enter. Hovering at his side, she was a vision from another world, prancing and flouncing around him. Her lashes swept the old man with a lascivious lure. Her lewd remarks made us all laugh.
She danced around him, ate him up, wove him into her silk—turned him slowly round and round. She taunted his bent frame, his knees gone weak. But the old man didn’t seem to mind. And waited patiently, for what I couldn’t say.
She was a lace peddler, who traipsed from street to street, beating on a drum, with a baboon in tow. For effect, I guess, though she certainly didn’t need it.
Then she saw me heading toward the tobacconist. Her hennaed hair, her ruffled dress. Her twirl, her eyes, her burnished skin. Bright nights, sloe-eyed mornings. Romani visions swelled her breast. Only we three seemed in her orbit, me, the baboon, and the old man, who all took for a fool.
I couldn’t dodge her gaze. The street was empty save for her. At that moment, I knew what the painted ducks felt like in the carnival shooting gallery. But like the old man, I didn’t really mind.
My soul will thrill, she told me, to a fiery passion, and know truths only I could know, if I would keep the cowry shell she placed in my palm. And give her a hundred francs.
The baboon looked away as I pondered the exchange. What message could I get, so young and naïve, from the burning embers of her Roma eyes? A small price to pay, I decided, for so fine a gift. The old man, I’m pretty sure, took the cowry too.
Not far from where we lived in Arles, a Roma encampment had taken root. Some evenings the sound of their drums echoed in the distance. Roma ladies strolled through town, their feet kicking the flounces of their skirts with every step.
The sun was hot that day and the church bells tolled out their plaintive three-note melody. In front of the Tobacconist, an elderly gentleman stood mesmerized, unable to enter. Hovering at his side, she was a vision from another world, prancing and flouncing around him. Her lashes swept the old man with a lascivious lure. Her lewd remarks made us all laugh.
She danced around him, ate him up, wove him into her silk—turned him slowly round and round. She taunted his bent frame, his knees gone weak. But the old man didn’t seem to mind. And waited patiently, for what I couldn’t say.
She was a lace peddler, who traipsed from street to street, beating on a drum, with a baboon in tow. For effect, I guess, though she certainly didn’t need it.
Then she saw me heading toward the tobacconist. Her hennaed hair, her ruffled dress. Her twirl, her eyes, her burnished skin. Bright nights, sloe-eyed mornings. Romani visions swelled her breast. Only we three seemed in her orbit, me, the baboon, and the old man, who all took for a fool.
I couldn’t dodge her gaze. The street was empty save for her. At that moment, I knew what the painted ducks felt like in the carnival shooting gallery. But like the old man, I didn’t really mind.
My soul will thrill, she told me, to a fiery passion, and know truths only I could know, if I would keep the cowry shell she placed in my palm. And give her a hundred francs.
The baboon looked away as I pondered the exchange. What message could I get, so young and naïve, from the burning embers of her Roma eyes? A small price to pay, I decided, for so fine a gift. The old man, I’m pretty sure, took the cowry too.
THE RUBICON
I crawl across the sand and kiss her feet, the queen of my nights, the captain of my heart. She raises an eyebrow and inches up her skirt. I melt into her like blood in dirt.
Another night in this desert hellhole of a war. I stand it the only way I can. Under the star-spattered expanse, the desert yields up her abundance—lilies and melons, flower-sweetened air gentled with the love-pained warbling of robins perched in plum blossoms, herons wafting homeward.
I crawl across the sand and kiss her feet. Her smile opens like a rose, my sovereign, queen of my heart. Sparks explode in my chest. “Lick my toes,” Rose says. Which I do.
Rose Rose Rose Erose Eros Eros…my life, my blood-red life … Eros! Let me live!
Her cheeks flame up, hot and red. Everything red and hot and wild. A battleground in my heart. It beats so loud, the gunfire pounds to a distant rush of blood in someone’s veins. It’s Horace, Horace’s blood pulsing so fast the dark liquid pools in the contours, changing shape as it flows over sandy rivulets, like the ever-opening petals of a rose bleeding into the earth.
My dream blurs wildly away and here is Horace Big Feather dying in the dirt. “Horace, what are you doing, fighting in this war!” Your family, on a reservation somewhere receiving your blood-soaked, government-issued shirt as a token of thanks for your sacrifice. A sob escapes my chest!
“Let not that happen, the Greeks said.” I raise my finger, to emphasize my point. I must have spoken out loud because through his groans Horace stammers, “That wasn’t the Greeks, man. It was some Roman guy. Ptolemy? Something about the Rubicon.”
“You mean the river they weren’t supposed to cross?”
Horace doesn’t answer.
I squeeze his shoulder. “Horace … wasn’t Ptolemy Greek?” I ask, anything to keep him from vanishing into pain.
“Ptolemy was Roman,” the medic says as he skids over, pushes Horace’s guts back in and tells me to hold really tight right here while he rips off the tape and slaps it onto Horace’s middle as he gently slides a couple different needles into Horace’s arm, lifts his lids, looks tenderly into his eyes, and tells him he’s good to go. “And that Rubicon thing. Don’t you go crossing it on me, now.” Whereupon he scrambles low and quick off to the next bleeding body.
“That’s right, Horace, let not that happen,” I say, my finger raised to command the ancients. “No bloody shirt for your war trophy. You’re going home with all your blood on the inside.”
Horace smiles. “Yeah, but that river sounds kinda nice.”
The battle rages on and I must have fought right there beside Horace, though I have little memory of it. I’m crossing my own Rubicon, the one with Rose—her hot, wild eyes, the inched-up skirt. I crawl across the sand … queen of my heart…. sovereign of my soul.
Another night in this desert hellhole of a war. I stand it the only way I can. Under the star-spattered expanse, the desert yields up her abundance—lilies and melons, flower-sweetened air gentled with the love-pained warbling of robins perched in plum blossoms, herons wafting homeward.
I crawl across the sand and kiss her feet. Her smile opens like a rose, my sovereign, queen of my heart. Sparks explode in my chest. “Lick my toes,” Rose says. Which I do.
Rose Rose Rose Erose Eros Eros…my life, my blood-red life … Eros! Let me live!
Her cheeks flame up, hot and red. Everything red and hot and wild. A battleground in my heart. It beats so loud, the gunfire pounds to a distant rush of blood in someone’s veins. It’s Horace, Horace’s blood pulsing so fast the dark liquid pools in the contours, changing shape as it flows over sandy rivulets, like the ever-opening petals of a rose bleeding into the earth.
My dream blurs wildly away and here is Horace Big Feather dying in the dirt. “Horace, what are you doing, fighting in this war!” Your family, on a reservation somewhere receiving your blood-soaked, government-issued shirt as a token of thanks for your sacrifice. A sob escapes my chest!
“Let not that happen, the Greeks said.” I raise my finger, to emphasize my point. I must have spoken out loud because through his groans Horace stammers, “That wasn’t the Greeks, man. It was some Roman guy. Ptolemy? Something about the Rubicon.”
“You mean the river they weren’t supposed to cross?”
Horace doesn’t answer.
I squeeze his shoulder. “Horace … wasn’t Ptolemy Greek?” I ask, anything to keep him from vanishing into pain.
“Ptolemy was Roman,” the medic says as he skids over, pushes Horace’s guts back in and tells me to hold really tight right here while he rips off the tape and slaps it onto Horace’s middle as he gently slides a couple different needles into Horace’s arm, lifts his lids, looks tenderly into his eyes, and tells him he’s good to go. “And that Rubicon thing. Don’t you go crossing it on me, now.” Whereupon he scrambles low and quick off to the next bleeding body.
“That’s right, Horace, let not that happen,” I say, my finger raised to command the ancients. “No bloody shirt for your war trophy. You’re going home with all your blood on the inside.”
Horace smiles. “Yeah, but that river sounds kinda nice.”
The battle rages on and I must have fought right there beside Horace, though I have little memory of it. I’m crossing my own Rubicon, the one with Rose—her hot, wild eyes, the inched-up skirt. I crawl across the sand … queen of my heart…. sovereign of my soul.
Poetry in this post: © Claudia Coleman
Published with the permission of Claudia Coleman