Ana Božičević

Emo Dasein

The first time I kissed was on film.
I stood by the ox-cart…
The other extras rushed in
To the frame, and I leaned & kissed
With a pure frenzy, my
“Husband.”
Then the Nazis walked into Prague.

I sit in the country house
High on opium. Floating.
Out of one window, instead of the snow & field
I c childhood: skeletal trams o Zagreb
Gliding through blue no-night air,
Some kids, and a man I know’s dead
Walking the street~ I look down,
Make like I’m just
A girl in the window.

Like I’m not from a different time.
I’ll put my arms around you~
I’m serious
And you can trust me~ through ether
I carry pure weight of childhood,
The sword in the stone.

I’m the figure on the transi tomb
Unchanging through centuries:
When I go, the idea of me
Stays as the will,
Felt belt left after a long war~

I often say pure…
This gross memory energy,
Jam of the spheres that bids me to live but
Keeps me from it, looking back, or into
Shit that don’t exist, yet do~

You’re right to despise
And fear imagining.
Stay in the rot
That accepts this~ doesn’t think
Up a world where we kiss
To move into
Like a cloud into a painting.

Later, the sun warms up then
Careens into the Earth~

Ana Božičević is a poet, translator and filmmaker. She wrote Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press 2009) and Rise in the Fall (Birds, LLC 2013), which received the Lambda Literary Award for Poetry. For more, visitwww.anabozicevic.com.