Working on a Phrase

I used a foreign phrase in a poem I wrote took it home for checking with my ma and pa mama said you shouldn't talk like that it isn't right to spread such things around and when she told me what it meant I said ok, I would remove it papa took the verse aside …

in translation: we should leave

Sada mi dojde"s? Koji vrijeme je ovo sti'ci doma? She saying to him: Now you here? What time this is, to be arrive home? Ti i tvoja neculturna banda! Jel niste znali koji vrijeme je ve'c pro"slo? She say: You and you no-culture band, eh ... group ... of friend. Do you not know what …

one more chances

Kad ti ne"sto tako dojde Frenki, nemoj "cekat, sinko moj, samo nemoj ti "cekat. Frenk, when I was young man, I think I tell you this before, tsure, the girls, they always like me too much. I am beautiful young man, them days, very handso, you know? I walk all time like man who own …

Fashion Cleanser

every Monday it's wet surfaces on knees with washing cloth and liquid cleanser bathrooms and kitchen wipe down chairs and vacuum some days the refrigerator we don't often say much beyond hello how are you but once she said this is no be forever Frenk is for my children is not what I do for all …

the first love

You love your country, Frenki? This place where you grow up, become man? Yes, I love her plenty, too, but she is not my number one love. That one is far away, over land and sea. Maybe more over sky today, but when I come here was everyone in the big boat. Avion was not …

Zlata’s Daughter

I met zlatica when I was young on a visit to the old country we held hands at the village dance and walked evenings on the corzo when I left she gave me golden dice on a chain and said osjećaj me - remember me ~~~~~ zlata is a mother now a grandmother       …

materinski jezik – the mother tongue

Frenk, tell me, why you not use you mother language some more, hmmm? You speak Australski, yes, but this is not you mother tongue. You mother tongue is Hrvatski, you call him Croatia, no? That is language you was born with and you papa and mama speak him. Why you no speak him more? Why …