by Márió Z. Nemes. Translated by Zoltán Komor
Red Water
In the village of the dwarfs everyone’s about four inches long. They shoot the ones who grow taller, keeping a gun around just for this purpose. The dwarfs call it Mother’s anger, but they also like to use the saw. What a hard-working community this is. They have a queen but they don’t have any women. Her name is Suzy, she lives in the middle of the village in a bile colored house. (The dwarfs lick its door handle every night.) One day, a young traveling student arrived, who was taller than four inches. The dwarfs gathered around him, giving hungry looks at his hands. They were so smooth, and he could imitate animals with them. This really annoyed the dwarfs, because they only liked to collect animal bones. The tricks of the young lad fascinated Suzy, deep sighs escaped from her mouth in the bile colored residence.
“Why don’t we let Mother’s anger free?”, the dwarfs asked, but their queen refused. By choice she would move in to the young student’s body and stay there forever. The dwarfs were roaming the animal cemetery with downcast eyes, not knowing what to tear out in their pain. Finally, they just picked some flowers from the graves. But no use, Suzy now belonged to the boy.
So let this be the day of the anger, the dwarfs decided. If mother is dead, then father will labor the boys. They surprised the young lad in his sleep, and carried away his ripped-apart flesh. The dethroned queen was crying and crying in the bile colored house, but instead of tears red water flowed on the bottom of the night.
Slaggy Afternoon
Peter’s antigravitation factory floats proudly over the hill. Smoke-brushes, like graying nasal hairs sticks out from its chimneys. The restful afternoon is not a matter of laughter, the rabbit tells itself below, swaying its head to the rhythm of the rising smoke. They used to live in a same hole together, when time was only a child. But later, this child got sick, and blood clots begin to multiply on the bottom of the cellar. When they ran out of place, Peter set off to fall in love. The rabbit still gets chills thinking back to that day, still seeing the raving boy who shouted, ”I’m going to cut my head off, and love it forever!”
When Peter completed this task, he watched excitedly, as a red bride grew out from the planted head. She was so beautiful, like nothing he have ever seen in the forest before! Peter taught her how to speak, how to eat, while the animals followed them silently behind the bushes. Soon, the day of the wedding arrived, but then the bride said that as long as she lives, she’s only going to love herself, and with an axe found in the lumberman’s lodge she cut off her head. After this, the only thing Peter wanted is to float. He built up his factory, and moved over the hill.
In the afternoon sunshine, a brown stain dries on the neck of the rabbit, while slag keeps falling onto the field from the factory.
This is the blood of the bride, the animals whisper, so they run to bath in it.
Mummy
The little girl is getting more and more muscular, she pulls her pants down showing off her mummy. This mummy was the youngest son of a king in an ancient world, but once, he tasted poison on a field, and his people had to bury him next to his predecessors with tears in their eyes. Now all of his people are gone, and only a dry head is left of him.
“After you reach ten, you should wear pajamas” voices whisper in the grove, but the girl just laughs at them. She already reached that age, but still she doesn’t wear anything else at night, just a dead little boy.
“We’re gonna grow up together, and become flowers, who devour each other” she tells the mummy, but cough shakes the dry head. He’s not growing anymore. He just wants to drink from the garden tap, before they set the whole woods on fire. After all, children shouldn’t sleep in the dark.
Bio: Márió Z. Nemes was born in 1982 in Ajka, Hungary. He is a poet and a critic, He started publishing around the turn of the millennium, since then his writings have appeared in all leading Hungarian literary reviews and magazines and he has three poetry collections published. He lives in Budapest.
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