Jelena Lengold [Serbia]

 

Shadows and Sledges
 
Soon there won't be anyone
who knew me when I was a child
and this will be the end of my childhood
it'll be as if it had never existed
to all the people in the world
I'll be this unfamiliar person in the mirror
who awaits me scared every morning
only a few photographs will remain
black and white ones, small and of poor quality,
the beaches which we won't be anymore
the windows from which we won't wave
the roofs that don't exist anymore
the white terraces on which grown ups used to dance
and I swayed in rhythm
my signature in children's handwriting on several books
and a pressed flower turning into dust
postcards that become more important by each year
dates of death that replaced birthdays
soon when there is no one who
knew me when I was a child
I'll let it all go like an afternoon dream
and I'll sit down to look at leaves rolling in the street
because it's autumn again, for who knows what time,
and they say it's going to snow tonight
and there won't be anyone left in the world who will remember
my little green sledges
that were left in the basement.
 
 
A Suburban Hotel
 
Just a very few things have been left
behind us:
The smell of despair
on towels of dubious quality,
my white earring drowned in the bed linen,
the outlines of your persistent knees (I wonder
will they excite the chambermaid coming in after us?)
 
Maybe once at night
some traveler will hear your breath,
forgotten,
and will dream me naked on the balcony
but not knowing who I am
nor what my shadow is really doing there
in the dark.
 
 
Passion
 
He confessed to me that at night he shuts the cat in the lift.
Her screams, crazed, frenzied,
hammerings on the wall, and most of all her wild meowing,
remind him, he said, of me.
All through each long night his sweet little blond wife
lies asleep beside him.
He listens: the cat in the lift, already out of her mind,
butting the glass with her head,
a wild beast clawing her flesh apart,
the jungle screaming down her bristling spine,
rams the wall, batters it with the bones of her tiny paws.
And just as the cat releases her last piercing wail,
in the dark, secretly, he shudders under the quilt.
 
In the early dawn, before anyone else is up,
my love drags me along by my dead tail
and chucks me on the rubbish heap.
 
 
 
Author’s Bionote:
 
*Jelena Lengold: Born on 15 July 1959 in Serbia. She has published nineteen books which include nine books of poetry, six books of short stories and three novels. Her books are translated and published in UK, USA, Italy, Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Albania, Danmark, Greece, Hungary... For her books, she has received several literary awards, including “European Union Prize for Literature” (EUPL) in 2011. Jelena Lengold has worked as a journalist and an editor in the culture desk at Radio Belgrade. She has afterwards worked as a project coordinator of Nansenskolen Humanistic Academy in Lillehammer, Norway. Since September 2011 she has been a freelance artist, dedicated solely to writing as her only profession. She is living in Belgrade, Serbia.
 
(Photo by Dalibor Danilovic)