Krisztina Rita Molnár
Report
Solution Oldás
Where I live
the crows aren’t coming in the morning.
But sometime in late afternoon when time
cease to exist the way it usually does,
a flock of augurs shoots down
in black dresses
to steal timelessness.
Scaring the Angel of Evanescence,
invented by a monk,
with scabrous predictions,
Yet, the angel doesn’t mind
dissolving in my tea
in the glare of winter’s end.
Perhaps it’s the absence
of nuts that brings
a flock of crows together.
Walnut trees aren’t planted in
the gardens nowadays because
according to old beliefs
their leaves are poisonous.
There are no parks over here either.
It’ll be different in February.
Spotted-breasted fieldfares are coming, I
to gormandize the frostbitten rowanberry.
BORBÁLA KULIN
WHERE WE DIDN’T EVEN START
With Wings up » Szárnyakkal fölfelé
there was a small butterfly figure on the ring,
its wings decorated by colorful gems.
Yellow curtains were rippling on the horizon,
the morning’s atmosphere was festive as my
grandma came home, with my gift, from the market of Pásztó.
The wind flew under her scarf, just like in the following Saturday,
with the same gift-giving smile on her face
but already in the drafty mortuary
lying in her open coffin.
I’ve never had a ring before. It occurred to me while
playing that I should lose this miraculous object.
I longed for the pleasure,
to find it,
to receive it again.
I dug a pit in the sandbox,
and I buried the ring with its wings up.
I had a hard time falling asleep, but I got up early the next day.
I dug up the whole sandbox again and again,
and not just where I thought I hid it.
I’ve been looking for it for thirty-six years now
The sandbox since had overgrown with thujas.
I can’t find it for over thirty-six years. It made me anxious for thirty-six years
now don’t I know who to thank
for this burden.
Zita Izsó
Arrival
Ice Jég
When he hit me, my mother
locked herself in the bathroom
and turned on the water.
It ran for so long
that I saw the whole river Danube
flowing through the tap
like apologetic sentences in his ears.
Why he hit me, I had to figure out.
If I couldn’t, he hit me harder.
He crushed burning cigarettes on my skin,
threw empty soda cans at me then
crushed them on the floor
my relatives, friends, coaches,
who would help me.
His liked to say,
“you’re a dike, a rug muncher.”
He squeezed my hand with the strength of
a dead animal’s locked jaws.
Sometimes he woke me in the middle of the night
and beat me locked me out of the house,
me wearing only pajamas.
He said, “You have to be tough.”
I got used to pain.
My wounds multiplied like tooth marks
on bones thrown to stray dogs.
I was free only when I skated on ice.
He couldn’t touch me.