Shelf Unbound October/November 2013 October 2013 | Page 62

poetry

From pH Neutral History by Lidija Dimkovska, translated from
the Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Peggy Reid, Copper
Canyon Press 2013, www.coppercanyonpress.org. Reprinted
with permission. All rights reserved.

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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

Key
by Lidija Dimkovska

When the key hung around your neck
your head was Buddha’s tummy,
rubbed by relatives and entrepreneurs
with an unchanging New Year’s wish
(money = health, happiness, and love),
they had their pet dream, you had your
pet nightmare,
Bach on the radio, beans in the bowl, and
Bruno Schulz
standing to attention in the shower cabinet. A
happy man gets charged up outside, and
emptied at home
(pockets, stomach, brain, and sperm),
only the emptiness is left on the anatomical
pillow
that remembers your head
even when the key has long since lost its string.
And now, when unhappiness too is a charging,
Buddha’s tummy needs to be rubbed against
the pillowcase
or be replaced by some newer deity,
changing the bed linen changes fortune too, like
a battery charger that no longer blinks.
You need a key for everything but your
conscience
horticulturally arranged with an English lawn,
a garden gnome, and a sensor fence,
a home where the one and only god is the
community nurse
who comes to visit three days after the birth
and three days before death.
In her black bag locked with a two-pronged key
once she carries scales to weigh life, the next
time to weigh death.