By JASMINA BOLFEK-RADOVANI
1.
I am sending my weekly heart reports to the government’s Broken Heart Department back in my forsaken country. So far, I’ve received no instructions. NO RESPONSE.
Odgovora nema.
Pas de réponse.
I don’t use any words or signs, I let beats and sounds speak. I write in the language of the murmur of the sea, crashed seashells, lazy rocks and stones, waves lost, boats regained… Snowflakes swirling underground. NOTHING.
—————RIEN.
NIŠTA.
I write my reports in the language broken by the days too pale languishing in the last teardrop lost in paradise.
J’écris mes rapports dans le langage brisé par les jours trop pâles languissant dans la dernière goutte perdue du paradis.
I create musical compositions in a tongue of silent letters. VLD. TSR. MZ._|]_.ZM. DSDSTV. FLSM. MSSNG. MNQ. {[]} Ad infinitum.
With harmonies of my foreign dusks.
Foreign dawns.
Still.
NO.
RESPONSE. RE.ST.PONSE.
NM DGVR.
SNS RPNS.
My reports are delivered to an abandoned post box at the border of the city I have never been to. An unknowable city. Enchanted by defunct fairy tales with a narrative form of stories in counterpoint.
Moja tjedna izvješća stižu u napušteni poštanski sandučić na rubovima grada u kojemu
nikada bila nisam.
Mes rapports sont délivrés dans une boite à lettres abandonnée au bord de la cité
que je n’ai jamais vue. Une cité impénétrable. Enchantée par des contes
de fée
disparus possédant la forme narrative des histoires en contrepoint.
Silenced.
Utihnute. Réduites au silence.
Purple, orange, blue notes and reports.
Sounds of blues, nostalgia.
I am sending my wordless reports on gossamer parchments more fragile than my damned soul. My heart is the colour of tamarind blue mornings bleeding on a foreign shore. A sinking truth.
♦
13.
Kakvi stereotipi! Quels stérérotypes, nonmaisfranchement!
echoes échocardio gram ekko jeeka leftsidevessel ecco vaisseaunavire srčana žila wouashwoushsssshshhhht houmtoum humtum tum houmtoum humtum hum tum wouahwoahwoahhh uses sound waves to build up a detailedpictureofyour hearth under the left breast throat tummy ecco an ultrasoundsystème Have a nice day!
today, I use a 7/8 time signature. 1-2-3 1-2 1-2. Or si tu veux 1-2 3-1 2-1-
2. It’s a
rhythm pattern I’ve not used before, but I liiike iit. I create my own beatbreath. Kreiram vlastiti beat, ritmomotkucaja stvaramvlastitu muziku… Synocopated syncho pâte synchopathos Kucam u sinkopiranom ritmu. MON rythme syncopé. Always something new…jazz, hiphop, drum ‘n bass, Argentinian tango. The tango time signature, ONE-2-3, ONE-2-3, ONE-2… freerythmes cardiaquespulssseirregular timing atrial fibrillation c’est mon arythmie qui sets in; some researchers have found significant correlations between les patterns of heart arythmies et les patterns musicaux [Expressive music performance and cardiac arrhythmia can be viewed as deformations of, or deviations from, an underlying pulse stream]; this allows for une identification meilleure des types of cardiac arrhythmia; research in development, but soundwaves prooomisingg Est-ce que tu vas me sing tes promesses?
my choeur skipped a beat aujourd’hui ‘De battre, mon cœur s’est arrêté’,
moje srce
je preskočilo beat. In the movie, unjeunehomme, a criminalorathug, dreams of becoming a concert pianist like his mother once was. Le plot est longwinded, but there is a Chinese pianist teacher called Miao Lin in it; I find her name to be strangely régulier… 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 4-5 6-4 5-6-7. Now I am totalno confused. Ali, tottalllnooo. Les arythmies cardiaques seraient, en fait, un beau mystère. Un mystère poétique.
The heart is not able to think rationally. I feel suffer fear despair I am
joyous.
JoYEUSE. SRetna. I am saD, tristement tuŽNa. I hateth, loveth, hateth again. With varrying intensità. Rhythm diferente every time. Incapable de penser rationnellement.
I ask you again – Si je suis un heartcoeursrce ordinaire, what languages jezike langues do I speak?
Note
- The quotation in brackets in poem 13. is from Elaine Chew, in: “Notating disfluencies and temporal deviations in music and arrhythmia” (consulted 11/6/2021).
♦
Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani is a London-based multilingual poet, arts practitioner and researcher of Croatian/Algerian heritage. Her poems have appeared in various UK magazines including harana poetry, Molly Bloom, Pamenar Press and Tears in the Fence, and in journals and magazines in Canada and Croatia. Poems 1. and 13. are part of a sequence called Heart Monologues; other sections have been published in Tears in the Fence and in Jasmina’s Reveries about language multilingual poetry collection (2019). Jasmina is the founder of the multilingual poetry project “Unbound” that received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded Language Acts and Worldmaking small grants programme in 2018 and 2019. Her website is here.
