Marija Dejanović (1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina) has published poetry, essays and literary criticism in various magazines. For her books, she was awarded the Goran Poetry Prize, the Kvirin Award for young poets, and the Zdravko Pucak Award for best unpublished poetry manuscript by a young author. She has participated in interdisciplinary performances and was the deputy director of the Thessalian Poetry Festival in Greece.
On the way to the shop
Translated by Vesna Marić
In a country where few speak your language
everyone speaks louder than you
everyone is more visible, more protected
hidden by numerousness
on the way to the tea shop you feel much too noticeable
The movements of your knees reflect your lack of friends
Your gait is stiff, too strict
and although everyone is extremely kind
they don’t dig into your flesh out of the goodness of their hearts
they talk amongst themselves not to bother you
they say good day and goodbye
Still, you feel like a pair of metal compasses
whose sharp shiny needle point stabs the concrete
metre after metre
As you walk from the flat to the shop, from the shop to the flat
you leave behind a vanishing circle of your presence, a language
of mutual incomprehension;
when you’re buying tea from the friendly shopkeeper
it is you, rather than the dried leaves, that is on display
Returning from the shop you begin to resemble them
Aimless, you are an eye that envelops
and does not reveal
Out of love for yourself you don’t question how you feel
just like out of your love for animals
you eat herbs planted by another’s children
who will never be able to afford the food they grow
you buy cashew nuts in a plastic bag
whose production melts women’s identity off their fingertips
But those are some other women, somewhere far away
women whose sisters live in towns that topple onto their heads
legal slave women
You have chosen your own hard times
Bought your good times with them
The streets are full of small shops
Each shop has many woven baskets
each woven basket holds a small personal defeat
You walk blonde, blue-eyed
because your skin is sun tanned
it is lovely to see you in every street
If they speak to you in that language
you shrug under your hat
They could say that they love you or curse you
and you wouldn’t know the difference
this ignorance is your small personal victory
Aubergine
Translated by Vesna Marić
You know, this is where I’m from now
mother told me while watching the half of the garden
that was full of the aubergines she’d grown
with too much care, like children, on a small plot of land
she’d bought with hard-earned money
dug up laboriously left-to-right, upwards
as if knitting a vest
The other half still has soil that needs digging
and it seems that with each wielding of the spade
she increases the distance between the village of her childhood
and this yard in which we stand
as if each step forward is a new void
but that, also, each new void is a reason to move on
In each hole she plants a memory
of long buried faces
Over there no longer exists
Although you’d only gone to visit maybe twice in your life
and I have already been here a year longer
than I had spent in –
and she pauses before saying
that I was born in the times of ethnic cleansing
but that there had been nothing clean
in the hospital where I first appeared
- miraculously alive –
while the splayed flesh of my mother was surrounded by dying
soldiers and civilians
- her flesh – and that I was born in a bed
in which no woman should ever give birth
and no child ever meet the world
that such hospitalisation cannot be called a service
but a crime against humanity
She lightly raised her elbow
to wipe the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand
and to stop digging
We got into the car in silence
After several hours we saw the border police
She still doesn’t like them
Just like the last time I saw her
granny wears a worn-out gray dress
and a wide smile
She stands at the gate, squinting
She’s made potato pie for us
Although she has remembered nothing for years now
granny can still perfectly recall my mother’s face
You haven’t changed at all, daughter
She says, and reaching out her hand
strokes my cheek
Concrete
Translated by Hana Samaržija
My friends live in gaps between the wardrobe and the wall
that are impossible to reach
as I stretch my arms, a web of silence
enters my mouth; they are the shady silence of plaster
I tell her: choose a picture frame
and stick your scalp through its hollow body
push the supple roots of hair untouched by sun
sprinkled with flour
sneak out of his kitchen or jump through the window
from the tenth floor, you’ll land on the atoms of possibilities
like the ashen flowers in the district park
Your eyes: symbols for bursting, heavy breasts
sagging from your father’s eyes, from equine milk, and presents
that shed from your skin instead of your husband’s cruel lips
His words gather in your bellybutton
and crawl to your neck, like cypresses in the cemetery
and suddenly, instead of dust, it is you hanging from the chandelier
My friends are mine because they are no one’s
they only listen to themselves and touch only themselves
my friend is the table leg
whose splinter pierces your thumb while moving house
My friend: a small plastic ball
filled with brown fluid
My friend is a curly hair
in the drain of her throat
He tells her: together we drew boundaries
to clean furniture together
She tells him: it’s easy to fall apart, it’s hard
to pierce a pea with your fork
My friends are the first sorrows
whom I genuinely loved
They are the first to make decisions
and the only ones to carry them through
My friends are tall buildings
whose hands hold the foundations
My friends are an airplane
with concrete legs
The Amphora
Translated by Hana Samaržija
To bury yourself in ashes:
a blissful thought, after a century asleep
in an amphora
burdened by heavy delights
Heavy, because on hold
to burst like a chestnut with its stomach split open
and to begin dreaming
Dreaming about the birth of an olive
the bruised thighs of skies that crows
pluck from their nests with beaks
string by string
until there is nothing left
but dreams of skinniness and silence
ceramic backs
and doors
To appear in the sun’s apron
To float in a mossy carriage, to
stretch into a column emanating from the bowl
An ordinary wooden bowl is
the hard core of our greeting
and slack is its gait
To open your eyes
invite the army to invade the city
and lay your forehead in a valley
the flipside of an elbow
Aubade
translated by Hana Samaržija
Aubade is a buffalo
It unwraps its horns like a lotus
and water is dew, strewn with a faint
twist of the neck. This mist forms a thin
dense layer of fur that trails its spine
like a white deer trails traffic
when it is snowing
The white petals of a lotus
or
white blood cells, like pearl necklaces
which hang from roofs when it turns cold
Aubade rushes and races with its brief
darting haste
like the life of a white rabbit
and other white animals
Aubade: the only part of the scene that is brown
Everything else is white, wherever
the round rifle of the eye
beneath its thin frosty membrane
can perform the splits
Brown is only a tree with four roots
and two branches
I do not know why, but aubade
reminded me of the juggler
who waits for the traffic lights
to turn green. He then hurls
dusty tennis balls
ball by ball
like large, smooth walnuts
dum
If one were to drop on the road
it would roll beneath a car waiting for its mark
and ruin the day
This way, make no mistake
There is no mud on its hands
My love is
a hunter that aims
for the empty space between two horns
Iceland
translated by Hana Samaržija
I will move to Iceland
like a flock of birds
like two bales of wheat
treading under the sun
to exhaustion, their skin
yoked to vertigo
with soft ribbons
I say: it’s reliable
this doesn’t mean: safety
this does mean:
my body is bound
and I am floating
like an amoeba
as free as
a life belt
without a
drowning man
to rescue
This empty core
is Iceland:
my need
to be warm
and thrown into water
my desire
to see you
blown up by a bomb
from my stomach
my hands
hold binoculars
watching me from the shore
in an explosion
inviting me
to forget my name
*
Iceland.
The desire to become cold
To only have sterile thoughts
and mouth simple sentences
to mount a rock of wet salt
and eat plain oatmeal
to wear thick woolen socks
to forsake human touch
and, once a month, to visit
white foxes
I would like an eternal Winter
I would like my room’s yard
to become her empire
I would sprawl on her cushions
and have her tell me that, in her youth, she
would sit on the chest of young men
and stay with them
until they ran
out of breath
*
I am sending you a letter from Iceland:
here everything is white
like the clouds I captured
from the airplane window
when I came to see you
During the day, the sky seems
like the North pole
You cannot see the ground
During the night, the soil
looks like a web of stars
I omit the brown details
I lie it snows
In the end, I don’t send the letter
I don’t begin hating the world
I don’t curl into bed naked
and I don’t cry
*
Your core is tiny
flushed, soft, smooth tissue
beneath a pile of knives
On a white morning
I will draw them one by one
like nails from a tent
and stab them in the foreheads
of everyone who exposed you