prose

Željka Horvat Čeč: Selected Poems

LIT LINK FESTIVAL 2017

Željka Horvat Čeč was born in 1986 in Čakovec. She has published two collections of poems, a collection of short stories and a short novel titled 4 Locks (2016). She holds a master's degree in Croatian Language and Literature and lives in Rijeka.

WHEN WE BUY WALLS

We’ll have to hold hands. Decorate flower pots.

Politely greet our new neighbors.

At night we’ll move the old things, furniture, puzzles and dice.

Iron the curtains and the faces. We’ll have to ask the fortune teller

for a lottery win or the murder of a politician

We have to become concrete.

***

ON DREAMS

When you dream you’re falling

it’s not a good sign

nor is running in place

nor your tooth falling out

the old wives say, someone of yours will die

someone will hurt you or betray you

and they didn’t say how to kill a snake in your dreams

or how to tell an old wife the cake didn’t set

they didn’t say how to explain trees to a blind man

but for betrayal we’ve invented everything

and no one said what it means when

you dream of fucking

and come in your sleep

***

MY SUMMER

You ask, why I kill wasps

throw stones at the rocks

and don’t walk on the crack

why I talk to crabs

and harass them

why I can’t walk in slippers

why I still build forts in the shallows

wear a straw hat

why I eat Bobi flips and read Lacan

you ask me why I swim naked

how can I explain myself to you

when you don’t understand my summer