Butchers
by Drago Glamuzina (translated from Croatian by Damir Šodan)

  1. I've already gotten used to that
  2. butcher's axe
  3. chasing me to bed.
  4. But before that happens
  5. I want to finish reading
  6. the last episode of Campbell's comic
  7. about Bacchus. Today
  8. he is four thousand years old
  9. and he is tired from too much wine and too many women.
  1. He is frequenting New York bars telling for a glass of wine
  2. how Greek girls used to come to him to tear them to pieces.
  3. The whores and the queens alike.
  4. Sometimes he goes too far and takes out his shrivelled dick
  5. and beats it against the table - just like my friend Milko -
  6. after which they usually throw him out of the joint or they call the police.
  1. I'm opening the window to let in the morning air.
  2. Down there on the ground floor
  3. they are carrying the pork bellies into the butcher-shop
  4. only to cut them and tear them to pieces.
  1. Then I make coffee and wake Lada up.
  2. After she goes to work I lay down
  3. on that spot on the bed
  4. where she'd been lying
  5. still feeling the warmth of her body
  6. while I wait for the fatigue to knock me down.
  7. So I can get that old god, his wives and butchers
  8. out of my head.
Packingtown Review – Vol.9, Fall 2017

Drago Glamuzina's award-winning publications include Mesari (Butchers, poetry, Naklada MD, Zagreb, 2001), Tri (Three, a novel, Profil, Zagreb, 2008), Je li to sve (Is That All, poetry, VBZ, Zagreb, 2009), Sami u toj šumi (Alone in that Forest, poetry, with photographs by Stanko Abadžić, Bibliofil, Zagreb, 2011), and Everest (Fraktura, Zagreb, 2016). His poetry has been translated into German, Macedonian, Slovene, English, and Polish. His latest poetry collection is Everest (Fraktura, 2016).

Damir Šodan is a poet, playwright, translator and editor whose work has been anthologised both in Croatia, his home country, and abroad. He is one of the editors of Poezija and Quorum magazines in Zagreb, Croatia, and has published a number of books in Croatian, including his translations of Charles Simic, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver, Leonard Cohen, and Frank O'Hara. Having worked for over twenty years as a translator for the United Nations, he is now a freelance writer and translator splitting his time between The Hague, Netherlands, and Split, Croatia.

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    Fanspoetry