Desislava Parashkevova grew up in Bulgaria, studied humanities at an international university in Bremen, Germany, and is currently doing a doctorate in metaphysics in Galway, Ireland.  

Parashkevova says: "My Bulgarian grandma was surrendering to dementia and dying. She was under the illusion that her whole family lived in Germany at a sumptuously carpeted house. In reality, only I lived in Germany, but my apartment wasn’t sumptuously carpeted. I wrote the poem sitting at my 'Wintergarten', with my dearest friend and philosophical partner Sidra Shahid. We both mentioned a 'winter garden' in our poems. It was only later that we figured that a 'Wintergarten' was a sunroom, not a winter garden."

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Her Body Thought

by Desislava Parashkevova

The body thinks moistly –
in its naughty foldedness, it thinks.
Even in death, you can’t strip it thoughtless.
You can’t sever
the wax dendrites 
from the jointless arms
of its candleholders.
Whenever
the haughty Mind tries
to hoist it onto Itself
and rip it away into an impossible world,
the body gets cross –
it gets surly.
It enacts its burlesque resistance,
distancing
itself from itself –
like a young girl holding
a round mirror
between her tenderly hirsute legs –
rosemary sprigs – 
in those sacred moments
when pleasure tarries
like the rigging of a ship 
buried
under cockles and nacre,
studied 
by knowing worms
and so ruddy 
under the rusty water –
like a börek
rolled by the grandmother
before her mind 
had confessed its thoughtlessness, 
her body shooting through itself –
knowing where to go,
though tethered to a mattress,
pulling 
its infinitely divisible
potatoes
from the potato garden –
free of derision –
teasing 
its knotted bones 
on warm Persian carpets
in stormy
Germanic countries,
humming 
or grunting after curly spinach leaves
like the burliest pig in the sty,
now dazzled, now descrying
the great and the lowly –
shameless
like a nude granddaughter hanging 
her garters in the winter garden.
The body thinks tardily –
in its unsoulful foldedness, it thinks.
Even in death, you can’t whip it thoughtless.
The body thinks sheepishly,
often sleepily, 
softly…
Whenever 
the clever and lofty Mind storms
to hide it unto Itself
and ship it into an impossible world,
the body grows moss
and curls itself
into a knowing worm.