Lana Bojanić was born in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1992. She published poetry and short stories in various magazines in the Balkan region, Austria, Netherlands and USA. She’s the founder of the literary troupe 90+ that, after many years of preforming together, published a joint collection Someone yells, children grow up. A winner of numerous awards, her first solo poetry collection, Utilities for hunting and time travelling was published in 2020. She currently lives and works in Manchester, UK.

My Father’s December

 The mornings start with a bag of oranges on the passenger seat
 Later he will cut them, squeeze them,
 But they don't know it yet, so they still smell nicely.
 He takes off and thinks about how
 In Czechoslovakia they believed that moonlight
 Can dull the razor blade:
 They walked unshaven and with intact wrists
 Every full Moon
 He doesn't know that in my hometown
 For over a hundred years now
 Rains melt the cathedral's towers
 In a metaphor for time or for love
 Nevertheless, he pays no attention to
 Angels at the roundabouts
 And the possibility to travel south
 He believes in mercy of the historic moment:
 He will never jump over the corpses in the street,
 Nor will he read medical prescriptions
 To his children instead of a good night story.
  
 On the cloudy sky, low horizon and
 Dark fields the only thing that shines
 Is your father's white shirt. 

A sunny Sunday in the North

 Flocks of elaborate beards push the strollers under the January sun
 In which guitars, cures for cancer and spaceships nap peacefully
 What a prize, a sunny Sunday in the north!
 Thin tendons of light stretch over the canal
 And today nobody will cry in the bathroom
 Or remember their grandparents somewhere far away
 Where people drink as if they want to melt something inside,
 Like they do with statues and church bells before the war
  
 With their translucent wives they will count the cities where it is summer now,
 Cities they will attach to the refrigerator with magnets,
 Cities they will name their kids after.
 They will promise to buy them a goldfish that will float, forever idle,
 In the regulated aquarium in the corner of the living room
 Out of which there is no need to jump.
  
 Today, one should enjoy themselves, because
 Tomorrow it will rain again, that is the rule,
 Hard drops will hit windows, asphalted roads
 And people and it will sound
 as if a thousand of journalists are typing on their computers all at once
 Breaking news about a country somewhere far away
 In which a civil war just broke out
 And now everybody's vacation tickets will go to waste. 

‘We’ll miss the postman, love’

 But I want to sit here a bit more!
 The Sun is so small, and the people are so tall
 I put my lipstick on every morning, but
 My lips are still two wooden matches
 Kiss me when I introduce you to my colleagues
 And what about that postman?
 I think they've even moved my photo
 Behind the ceramic fish or the Bible,
 That's why I have troubles falling asleep
 Let's go to the flea market or learn curling
 Let's go to the dinner organised by Christian youth
 And not think about our parents, not until the dessert
 Let's pretend we've just met
 That you don't know how the skin on my back
 Is chequered with fear like a coat lining
 That I don't know how you flirt with the postman
 Let's not speak the same language!
 Ask me in English: 'How do you do?'
 'Que sera, sera'
 Ask me if my dad liked Shawshank Redemption, 
 And about the smell of my mother's palms
 When she covered my eyes during sex scenes
 It feels like my teeth are growing again, love
 They'll try to hunt me down for ivory soon,
 The whole gangs of poachers and tooth fairies
 Let's stay here
 Let them think we went to wait for
 Your fucking postman, new IKEA catalogue
 And the reminder from utility company
 Let's trick them
 They don't know I can neither feel my feet
 Nor the clothespins on the fabric of my back anymore
 Might've been the cold? Might've been the empty chair?
 Or it might've been the bags under the postman's eyes
 In which I've packed all my belongings and
 Now I cannot find anything of value anymore.