TANJA AJTIC

 

Stone

 

Stone upon stone

my house is built.

In the threshold of the front door

a venomous snake is walled in,

to drive away evil and frighten

those who are not welcome,

the unwanted and the thieves.

Its poison still flows beneath

the threshold for wild

animals thirsty for blood

and hungry as well.

 

Stone upon stone,

a wall around me

so I do not allow evil

to enter my soul,

so that even in the inner courtyard

I may be preserved,

within myself

feeling free.

 

Time

 

The rain is come,

the downpour

that washed everything

all nature

relentlessly

and too much

for one life

without an umbrella

for a life without

a raincoat.

Broke sky

crying

for us and

instead of us

small

as we

hurt everything, we touch.

Us small and sinful,

and then it rained

to bathe us and

remind us to be better people.

 

And time

flows irretrievably and does not stop

until we reach the station

where we need to get off

and get on another train

into another dimension and

projection

into another form that is purgatory

to the future life of a

new, sinless one

like babies born

angels,

and then all over again

like nature, as animals

and people, we are born

and the rain doesn't bother us

because it is like holy water

falls and cleans the world.

It makes us get away from it

instead of dancing in the rain.

 

TANJA AJTIC

 

TANJA AJTIĆ was born in Belgrade, Serbia, where she lived and studied. She graduated from two schools: the Law Bureau Technical School and the Program Organizer and Cultural Arts School, both in Belgrade. She also studied at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, majoring in Serbo-Croatian Language and Literature. Until 2002, she worked as a civil law secretary at the Federal Court of Yugoslavia. Since 2002, she has been living and creating in Vancouver, Canada. In the summer of 2023, she returned to Belgrade, Serbia. She is a member of several literary groups and associations, including the Society of Belgrade Writers. Her poems and short stories have been published in over 200 books, anthologies, e-books, and magazines. Her works have appeared in numerous languages, including English, Serbian, Chinese, Croatian, Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French. She has participated in numerous poetry recitals around the world. In the spring of 2018, she won an award at the “Pegasus” competition organized by the Literary Youth of Serbia in Belgrade, for the publication of her first poetry collection Outlines of Love. The book was featured at the 2018 Belgrade Book Fair and the 2019 Toronto Book Salon. She was selected for inclusion in the 2020 Anthology of the 30 Best Writers by the Association of Writers of Australia. In the same year, she won first place for foreign authors in Tuzla Canton, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and second prize from the Serbian Library in London, UK. Tanja has participated in multiple book fairs with her own book Outlines of Love, and in numerous anthologies alongside other authors.