Trusina, Bosna i Hercegovina
i had the antipodean notion that if it snowed
in winter, summer must be cold too
what do i know of extremes anyway?
here summer is a languid crawl:
cumulus and low-slung haze,
air dry as kukuruz in my neighbour’s field
dry as hay baled into stacks like little houses
everything a flicker but far from ignite
i walk to the lake each day inking
my fingers purple on kupine
growing wild beside the road
plucking jabuke and kruške and šljive
from orchards left unreclaimed, re-wilding
fourteen croats were killed in my village
their homes left for the taking but i do
not think of whose fruit fills my mouth
the road is a crumbling snake halving my village
it would be quicker to cross the river
to stroll through cedar and orah and
crush majčina dušica and wild mente underfoot
but i am afraid of the other things left behind
PAZI – MINE; red stark against the trees
skull and cross bones, universal
the war is over but the dying is not
it is a twenty-minute walk through
air that crackles like empty chip packets
that no one has time to pick up because
there are bigger ribe za prženje and
the last stretch is steep rise to meet
three grey houses decomposing into bracken
i do not see them and look instead for
šumske jagode, though it is too late for them too
the lake unbends in dizzy aquamarine
it’s the cobalt in the water that stains it
bluer than all the red forgetting in Bosna
i unfurl walking down the hill, discarding
my dress and shoes on a sky-soaked bank
the water is taman, as they say here,
and i wade out with this summer’s froglets
skipping against my shins
Dženana Vucic is a Bosnian-Australian writer and editor. Her essays and poetry have appeared in Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, Going Down Swinging, Australian Poetry Journal, Plumwood Mountain, Scum, the Australian Multilingual Writing Project, Rabbit, and others.