Poems by Hajnal Csilla Nagy

Igor


The boys who study
English at the university
are almost always
very handsome.


Their eyes are as if
they knew everything but
also nothing (this would
bathe them in shade that
isn’t invented yet).


They will all be very successful
in their own way
– some in this, some in that –,
and will make love to
beautiful, fragile, bashful girls,
wearing socks.


Igor is colour-blind, paints
chaotic pictures,
is mad at colours.
I ask him, panting: How was it?
- Khorosho – he sighs wearily,
as if that was all he (or me)
knows in Russian.


He studies English
in Moscow, but he’s
with me now, escaping
(I can’t remember whether from her mom
or Putin), he has chequered
socks, except for
the one that has Spiderman on it.


He doesn’t like talking to me,
because the accent I’m using
doesn’t even exist – that is
nonsense, but he knows:
he has to say things like this
in order to keep me in his bed.


You are my favourite painter.
- Khorosho – he sighs, as if
that was all.


He’s on the phone with his mother
(or Putin),
hangs up, catching his breath.


By the crosswalk, I glue
my hands to my ears, lock
the city inside a jar,
he isn’t paying attention, like
inside a cold river, I dip
my toes in the road,
look, I tell him, like the Yenisey,
should we rather go home and make love?
- Khorosho.


One day just out of
boredom he starts to paint me
on the wall.
My colors are completely different – I laugh, but
in Hungarian, the brush doesn’t stop.


Igor mostly falls in love with
short-haired, thick-limbed women,
in my opinion. Whether or not he would be
able to fall in passionate love
with Putin,
I can’t be sure, but it’s
probable.


Скорей бы конец – I sometimes hear
at night, as he whimpers,
locking himself in the bathroom.
- Khorosho – I whisper to the door
and pack my things.


But I think
he might have been called
Vladimir after all.




This one is never going to have a title


It’s not you,
it is the cat snuggling to your thighs
that I’m watching.
It’s not you that I want.
I want the cat. To be replaced.
By me.




No way


If the child’s eyes
aren’t going to look like
yours
we leave it in the hospital
and
try again.


(Translated by the author)

Hajnal Csilla Nagy (1992) was born in Slovakia and is currently studying comparative literature in Budapest. She is the online editor of the Slovakian-based Hungarian literary journal Irodalmi Szemle. Her poems and short stories were published in various periodicals; for her first book, she was awarded the Makó Medallions award for the best poetry debut of the year in Hungary.

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