Decent Girl | Lidija Dimkovska (translated by Ljubica Arsovska & Peggy Reid)
I took my perspective of the future to a thrift store
but nobody would buy it. The net is prickly
and there are no more heroes. Sorrow is purely physical pain.
If there's no water, let the eye-fluid hanging on the glasses drop.
If you wear no glasses, pretend you are Chinese
(one eye looking eastward and one looking westward
equals écriture fémenine in a male society).
The fashion of the Orientals
comes back in a package of diet food.
And bless me while I'm still a decent girl.
Tomorrow or the next day I'll lose my sinful ways,
I'll wear embroidered blouses from the Ethnographic Museum
of Macedonia, and someone will help me pay for them.
To survive, we'd best turn the lector's apartment
into a gallery. We shall exhibit
varicose veins, dried umbicili, retinas
and broken hearts in direct proportion
to South American soap operas
(tell me why you left me and married my sister),
and sorrow is purely physical pain
cured in my country by surgical operation.
Here I recognize it by a pain in my index finger,
crucial in the expansion of mobile phone networks.
I don't know why my uncle didn't beat me in a sack.
At this age it's best if somebody else
cuts your umbilical cord,
and I am not afraid of Virginia Woolf,
I fear Lidija Dimkovska. Have you heard of her?
A woman not wholly christened,
whose friends have all taken the vow,
the bodiless woman and all those she's loved remain unmarried.
That almost completely non-woman of yours
(likely sponsored by Soros to become tender?)
almost to the negation of the idea of Medea, of Judea, of her.
No, I'm not afraid of the numbers 1, 4, 7 in the eye clinic,
or of mortages or religious holidays,
what I'm afraid of is the existing attitude of God,
the God who does not exist, and I'm afraid of his great eyes.
Alas, what a multitude of words! Dictionaries are a lucrative job.
You sit at home and play: Something beginning with ...!
From now on I shall speak in onomatopoeia,
Or better, in metaonomatopeia.
Be that as it may, it was nice meeting you, Father.
Were I not a woman you could've taken my confession.
But I don't mind this either.
We're having tea, biting each other's nails
and licking our lips. Chirp chirp! Metachirp metachirp!
but nobody would buy it. The net is prickly
and there are no more heroes. Sorrow is purely physical pain.
If there's no water, let the eye-fluid hanging on the glasses drop.
If you wear no glasses, pretend you are Chinese
(one eye looking eastward and one looking westward
equals écriture fémenine in a male society).
The fashion of the Orientals
comes back in a package of diet food.
And bless me while I'm still a decent girl.
Tomorrow or the next day I'll lose my sinful ways,
I'll wear embroidered blouses from the Ethnographic Museum
of Macedonia, and someone will help me pay for them.
To survive, we'd best turn the lector's apartment
into a gallery. We shall exhibit
varicose veins, dried umbicili, retinas
and broken hearts in direct proportion
to South American soap operas
(tell me why you left me and married my sister),
and sorrow is purely physical pain
cured in my country by surgical operation.
Here I recognize it by a pain in my index finger,
crucial in the expansion of mobile phone networks.
I don't know why my uncle didn't beat me in a sack.
At this age it's best if somebody else
cuts your umbilical cord,
and I am not afraid of Virginia Woolf,
I fear Lidija Dimkovska. Have you heard of her?
A woman not wholly christened,
whose friends have all taken the vow,
the bodiless woman and all those she's loved remain unmarried.
That almost completely non-woman of yours
(likely sponsored by Soros to become tender?)
almost to the negation of the idea of Medea, of Judea, of her.
No, I'm not afraid of the numbers 1, 4, 7 in the eye clinic,
or of mortages or religious holidays,
what I'm afraid of is the existing attitude of God,
the God who does not exist, and I'm afraid of his great eyes.
Alas, what a multitude of words! Dictionaries are a lucrative job.
You sit at home and play: Something beginning with ...!
From now on I shall speak in onomatopoeia,
Or better, in metaonomatopeia.
Be that as it may, it was nice meeting you, Father.
Were I not a woman you could've taken my confession.
But I don't mind this either.
We're having tea, biting each other's nails
and licking our lips. Chirp chirp! Metachirp metachirp!