After climbing two hundred and twenty stairs
hips come loose like hinges and
a child’s hiccup echoes through the pelvis
as if the belly button ate the hypocenter
My downstairs neighbor spent months
collecting drops in plastic basins
in each of the rooms
Who’s to know exactly when
the pipe in her bathroom broke
This week they’ll drill through her walls
to look for the crack
Temperatures have dropped below zero,
she’s freezing with fear
her milk won’t flow
These sorts of days, when people stick to their shells like
pistachios,
secretly slip into quarter loaves of bread at the checkout
counter
and with no one to appeal to
This morning
Frost has lain heavy
over the dead does
even though
it’s the closed season
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From Closed Season by Monika Herceg, translated from the Croatian by Marina Veverec. Copyright © 2025. Available from Sandorf Passage.
Monika Herceg
Monika Herceg, a Croatian poet, screenwriter, dramatist, editor, and activist, is the author of three poetry books: Početne koordinate (Initial Coordinates, 2018), Lovostaj (Closed Season, 2019), and Vrijeme prije jezika (2020). She has received many prestigious national and international awards, including the European Poet of Freedom Award 2024. A physicist by profession, she spent her childhood in the village of Pecki near Petrinja. A mother of two, she lives and works in Zagreb.
