Feminine Touches, 2019, Courtesy the artist Elena Nikolic

Josip Broz Tito 1 was our best
director.
In parades of work, and parades of hope,
dislocated from their own beings,
the actors played their roles in the streets,
our streets,
waiting on the payments of collective happiness,
the missing opulence.

Now I take the red spider by the hand,
by its tiny hand,
dragging him out of the corner of Lolita’s room,
so we can go tying the flags together, for you,
he will tye three together on his own,
so you can see them better.
Because there no other flags, no other
ways of celebrating, that I –
today’s artist of Josip Broz –
(Who else can I claim as my own?)
can present you with.

I don’t like finite things,
I know that everything lasts forever,
like a photo from 1968,
like individual madness, it renews itself
much like a snake shedding
its old skin.

In the felt backpack,
there are perpers 2 for love,
since it’s also for sale.
Art is politics, otherwise it would have been
just a cluster of veins, net made of nerves,
rubble.

You cannot love the night unless you see it,
and this love poem tells you in old-fashioned terms
about that splitting in half,
the stitching up of self,
at the Centre of the World,
the architecture of solitude,
my back is so used to your torso.

Arise!
Who can afford to sleep late these days?
Your eyes gleam as you ask me
what to wear.
Morality is a vaginal sensation,
therefore – the blue sweater, I say.
Though the erect gray suit disagrees.

Get up at least around 9 AM,
we will wait for you at the Broz’s Slet, 3
from my spot in the crowd I will –
following the blueprint of our union –
raise high those Spider flags,
so you can easily find me.

May 1st 2012

1-Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980) was a Yugoslav communist leader and politician who served in various positions of national leadership from 1943 until his death in 1980. Roughly a decade following his death Yugoslavia fell apart and the bloody civil ensued.

2-Perper was the currency of the Principality of Montenegro (Serbian: Књажевина Црна Горa, romanized: Knjaževina Crna Gora) in Southeastern Europe from 1852 to 1910. It was then proclaimed a kingdom by Nikola I, who then became King of Montenegro. Since 1945 till 1991 it was one of the Yugoslav republics.

3–Slets were a form of mass events that were staged in socialist Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (1945-1991) on a variety of occasions. The most famous and spectacular slet was staged annually on the Day of Youth, every May 25th, at the Yugoslav People’s Army Stadium in Belgrade. The slet was the central and final event on every Day of Youth, which was also Marshall Tito’s birthday

 

Translated from the Croatian by

Dragana Tripković
DRAGANA TRIPKOVIĆ is a poet, playwright, journalist and activist from Podgorica, Montenegro. She has published several critically acclaimed volumes and is a founder and coordinator of the alternative theatre group ATAK.

Damir Šodan
DAMIR ŠODAN is a poet, playwright and translator, born in Split. He has published seven collections of poetry, three books of selected plays as well an anthology of Croatian neorealist poetry and the anthology of contemporary European poetry, Are There Any Poets in Monte Carlo (Croatian PEN, 2022).

Elena Baglai Nikolic
Elena Baglai Nikolic is a Montenegrin-based visual artist originally from Kazan, Russia. She studied painting and drawing at the Kazan Art School named after N.I. Feshin , pr. Vagapov.M.A., she has lived and worked in Budva, Montenegro, where she also runs a private art school. Elena’s practice includes painting, graphic arts, and decorative panels, often using mixed materials such as ceramics, textiles, and wood. Her commissioned works have been featured in luxury hotel projects, including Harmonia and Nikki Beach, with over 160 pieces created. She has participated in international group and solo exhibitions and biennales, and her works are part of private collections in Montenegro and abroad. Elena’s art reflects her deep interest in texture, rhythm, and the emotional resonance of visual form.