NAIDA MUJKIC - POEMS

Naida Mujkić, PhD. Her work has appeard in literary journal and anthologies around the world. So far, she published five books of poetry and one book of lyrical prose. She has participated in several international poetry and literature festivals.

SMOKE TREE
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​First they were timidly bringing logs in shopping bags,
and then, little by little, they started coming to the park
carrying transparent bags with kindling.
One man who was buying from them
was taking smoke tree over the border
and sold it there five times as expensive.
The married couple knew nothing about borders.
Their customers were elderly people
who were pushing wheeled shopping bags in front of them.
They were saying that trees had been following them.
Medicinal trees grow there were the old people fall ill.
But smoke tree didn’t grow in the town.
Did it mean the smoke tree was of no use
for the old people in town?
The married couple had no answer to this question.
“We’re just selling smoke tree,” they said.
 
The snow is sleeping in the park. December morning
is turning out its pockets. And old people are sleeping
in their smelly rooms, while those
luckier ones are no longer there. With iron fingers
the woman is taking off snow from heaped smoke trees, like
a wrinkled bedsheet. Street lamps are blinking. Memories
grow on leaves that are still holding on to the branches.
The man is looking at the leaves. It appears that the leaves
are trying to say something to him, but the man doesn’t understand.
 

I WISH TO HAVE A HOME 
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I've seen magnolia flowers blooming gently
At the corner of an abandoned street
And Aborigines making love
To fallen petals
In an unconscious state
And nobody recognises them
Shells, iron ore rocks and firs
Are coming out from my mouth
Roads are bursting through of my mouth
Roads full of sunsets
And these are now their roads
By which they count
Sunsets
Or spread wind, so the magnolia flowers
Disperse
Into dark lines on the ground
Only the song is everywhere
Every petal every scream