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arts, literature

Stefanie Parisius-Sewotaroeno: Material

By Stefanie Parisius-Sewotaroeno, translated by Laura Vroomen
17 January 2025 1 min. reading time The Alternative

Eighteen young Flemish and Dutch authors drew inspiration from the collection held by the Mauritshuis in The Hague. They looked at seventeenth-century paintings through the lens of an alternative history which they then brought to life in short but powerful texts. Stefanie Parisius-Sewotaroeno wrote a poem in response to a work by Jan Steen, The Life of Man, painted in 1665. ‘my generation also suffers from muscle memory’

Material

I stretch fleeting moments till the stitches tear
life exacts its price again
the day slows down anew

the curtain comes undone

my generation also suffers from muscle memory
a shocked frown so deep it cuts my forehead
self-activating facial features, extreme movements
so ingrained that resistance questions one’s existence

I want to salvage something

but that life disappears, collective warmth dissipates
what lingers are echoes
vibrations that seek, ask, beg refuge
only to end up in the felled seams of the day
waiting to reverberate

the curtain falls

slowly I lose myself underneath plain fabric
what finds me are a string of memories
reflecting fragments that want to whisper to me
shadows that seek to creep in, in vain
defeated they add – oh go on – dimension to my face

the silence is palpable

I feel weight, I feel affection
beyond the pleats I find a trace of my voice
no longer shy of something to say
I whisper, less thunderous than a pounding heart

it is time

I peer, I peer, I peer until I see myself
stripped bare, undone by the sun
long enough and I ignite.

Stefanie Parisius-Sewotaroeno

Stefanie Parisius-Sewotaroeno (1993) is a Surinamese poet with Javanese roots. She won the Write Now! Publieksprijs in 2016, took part in Vrystaat Kunstefees in South Africa in 2022 and wrote poems for the exhibition ‘Famiri Familie’ hosted by the Amsterdam City Archives and the National Archives of Surinam. She finds inspiration in culture, nature and social issues.
photo by Marianne Hommersom

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