Animals

Sometimes, among the voices in the crowd,

I feel twitching in my neck, my veins tighten

and a snake tongue flicks out of my mouth uncontrollably.

The webbing between my toes has grown since birth.

Why did you not inherit my ear for music instead;

grandma keeps pounding at the piano keys,

and I try to sing the right note, with bitterness,

for the sake of the genetic code.

It teaches us how to fall in line,

flap our wings, grunt, stretch and hold out the paw,

snarl, plunge into waves.

A few years after her death, I can still hear

her drifting body, the flailing of her arms:

they cut through summer’s haze, autumn’s chill,

the frozen crust of the lake.

The movements are mechanical, resembling an engine,

the moving wheels of a shopping cart,

their rhythm forcibly pierces my ears

and the lullaby that I reluctantly sing to my child.

I practice my strokes,

I slide through the echo of the recurring question why,

the horror of grandma's nightmares;

they tied her to the hospital bed, stuffed her mouth with pills,

smothered her howls;

the flashing images of gray faces from the camp, shame,

they surrounded us with rifles,

I had to relieve myself before their very eyes.

Until I stop, I glide

with the gentleness I use to feed the baby,

the sound of the last piano key resonates and quiets down.

I drag myself into silence,

an animal, one of many.

(Translated from the Slovenian by Martha Kosir)