poetry

Damir Šodan: The Afternoon of a Clown

Damir Šodan (1964, Split) is a poet, playwright, editor and translator who graduated from Zagreb University with a BA in English Literature and History. He has published four volumes of poetry: Sound Changes (1996), The Middle World (2001), Letters to a Wild Scythian, (2009) and Café Apollinaire (2013), two collections of plays: Safe Area (2002), The Night of the Long Beams (2009) and an anthology of contemporary Croatian "neorealist" poetry: Walk on the Other Side (2010). He was awarded the Držić prize for the burlesque Chick Lit (2012) and the 1st prize at the playwriting competition for ex-Yugoslav writers in Vienna (2000) for the dark comedy Safe Area. Internationally, his work has been among other featured in The American Poetry Review (2007), New European Poets, (Graywolf Press, USA, 2008), Les Poètes de la Méditerranée (Gallimard, 2010), The World Record and A Hundred Years' War (Bloodaxe, 2012 and 2014). He translated Raymond Carver, Leonard Cohen, Charles Bukowski, Charles Simic, Richard Brautigan and Frank O'Hara into Croatian. He is an associate editor of Poezija and Quorum magazines in Zagreb.

Madiba in "Top Gear"

"have you ever had a lap-dance?"

roared from the doorway

the former traveling salesman

of plush Paddington bears,

Mr Jeremy Clarkson, nowadays a slightly arrogant

and supposedly humorous

British TV-star;

the host of an automobile show

viewed devotedly all across Europe.

upon hearing that, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

(whose life and work need no discussion here)

simply raised his eyebrows gently

and directed his gaze towards the ceiling fan

as if the answer to such an unexpected

and ludicrous question could drop down

from somewhere above.

"Madiba, you don't have to answer that!"

the ever-considerate and attentive Zelda

quickly jumped in, but in his thoughts

he was already racing back to

Robben Island during that fatal 1964

trying to remember if back then

anyone around him had been shaking

their ass except maybe when stung

by Apartheid's eel-like baton

slippery and hard

that always unmistakably found its way

to a piece of black flesh

classified as "class D"

and locked in an eight-by-seven foot cell  

or maybe later in 1982

in that "comfy" maximum security facility Pollsmoor

where those upgraded into a lighter category

were allowed to receive and send

as many as fifty-two letters a year!

no, he could not remember if anyone had

merrily wriggled his behind

unless plagued by a case of bloody dysentery

or tortured by a sneaky pubic crab or two...

but maybe later in 1988 somebody

had done it at that quite permissible establishment Victor Verster

but Nelson had hardly been aware of anything then

as he was recovering from a mean case of TBC...

"you don't have to answer, Madiba"!

repeated Ms La Grange

and Nelson just smiled

as if watching a kid walking towards him

with a rare specimen of turtle in his hand...

"no!" he finally replied succinctly

so that the conversation might continue

with the expected civility and finesse.

yet, at the end of the meeting

he looked Clarkson in the eye and asked:

"have you ever been on the Moon, Jeremy"?

for it is only from there perhaps

that the dry British humor could hit the even drier

heart of black Africa - in the right place.

The Fifties

                                           after Adam Zagajewski

father and his father

stomp down the gravel road

all the way to the town to see a football game.

high noon buzzes through the young summer air;

the roar of cicadas in the pine trees, 

glassy hoppers glint in the grass:

the Mediterranean

as we once knew it

– is still there.

a bit further to the north

the airy crowns of convicts

melt under the belting Sun

dripping like the sweat underneath

their sleeveless white T-shirts

as their sad and bitter sigh

carries itself all the way to the gray Maltese docks

then echoing out into the icy mountains

of the Altai region in the far east. 

somewhere behind Žrnovnica

grandfather, like an ancient lizard, 

suddenly scowls his fissured face.

wincing from his tight shoes

that are killing him,

that damn pair of footwear

he's sharing with his first cousin, 

a locksmith who compulsively steals rusty pliers

and steel nails from the dusty workshop

of the local power-plant,

absolutely unable to explain to himself for what

purpose in the devil's name he needs them for. 

simultaneously, in a Dedinje salon in Belgrade, 

Tito cracks jokes as comrades

from the Central Committee laugh raucously

while he tries out his new metallic

- polished as a dog's balls -

light duty lathe machine.

all across the country

generations with pointed chins, much like Modigliani's, 

are busy building Socialism

with a human face: the system

that would gradually like mean drops of vitriol

burn a deep hole in their souls.

but in father's head

the world still bubbles unexplored, 

floating like a translucent jellyfish across the unsailed sea 

as he daydreams of a new DKW motorcycle

as black and shiny as Silvana Mangano's high heels

and as powerful as Mons Jerko's untied robe;   

so in my thoughts

- for I can't help it -

I worry endlessly about that boy,

because I know his ride

will be an uncertain and long one.

I wish I could tell him not to worry,

to relax and take it easy for everything will

more or less someday fall into place.

but words fail to leave me:

perhaps I have no mouth to speak them yet,  

perhaps I'm not around as much as I should be,

perhaps I'm myself still only - slowly but surely - just getting there.

Ramones On the Bedroom Wall

the first thing I see

every morning

is Dee Dee's reproving gaze

the man is no moralist,

but his knowing, junkie eyes

have that effect

they give me the urge to start my day off

by apologising to everything: from the flowers in the Ikea vase

to the Pentecostal Church across the street

but in the end

like a born-again opportunist

I sneakily manage to avoid it

leaning further to the right is Joey

the perpetually understated

obsessive-compulsive

with the hips of a Russian gymnast

and the hair of a crazy headmistress

like a shaggy Heraclites from Queens

he tells you that everything can change

that at any moment you can be grabbed by a dark avatar

or end up blacklisted by some secret sect, trade, ministry or committee

on the far left - oh the irony! - is the Nazi-schatzi marmot

Johnny, whose face says that he’s in it

(the band, not the picture)

only for the money, the papers, the royalties

and Joey’s ex-girlfriend, leading the former to pen him the ditty

The KKK Took my Baby Away!

beside him stands the always amiable Tamás Erdélyi

aka Tommy Ramone¹, a Holocaust survivor, born in Budapest,

now a mandolin player with his own bluegrass band,

the steady compass and last remaining member

of the legendary foursome’s first line-up, dubbed by Spin magazine

 - alongside The Beatles - as the greatest r'n'r band of all time. 

so these are my four morning perspectives:

the four blackbirds of Wallace Stevens,

my wife’s four zen-jokes,

who carefully guard

the gentle rebelliousness of her Anglo-American

maiden roots,  

all those innocent and rosy dreams

of a perfect world, where Courtney, like Amfortas,

still embraces her dead Kurt

while poet Ann Lauterbach

wallows endlessly in her affectations,

like the ethereal essence of mannerism,

and Germaine Greer lives in a home