Kupihár Rebeka: Poems from the time of the ’Child Protection’ referendum [Panodyssey]

A Panodyssey egy Franciaországból indult kezdeményezés, melynek fő célkitűzése egy közösségi oldal létrehozása: a felületen a felhasználóknak lehetőségük van saját szövegeik közvetlen publikálására és monetizálására. Arról, hogy hogyan működik a Panodyssey, hogy miért éri meg használni az íróknak és az olvasóknak is, ebben a cikkben írtunk alaposabban.

A Creative Room European Alliance konzorcium feladata, hogy a Panodysseyt Európa más részein is megismerjék. E nemzetközi program keretében több mint 9 európai ország különböző szervezetei működnek együtt. 2022 őszétől pedig, a Könyves Magazinnal szakmai partnerségben, Magyarországon is elindult a Panodyssey platform népszerűsítésére indított projekt.

My colleague is gesticulating wildly, the walls around her decorated with family drawings.

They’re poisoning our children’s minds,

they’re disgusting, filthy, all of them.

Her disciplined features are twisted, her hands clenched into a fist.

They’re worming their way into schools now too; it’s sickening,

nothing’s sacred to this lot anymore.

I sink into the chair, my face expressionless

not from professional habit now, but out of self-defence.

I’m not saying filthy homos, though I’d like to,

I still had a childhood, thank you very much.

Camouflage has become my colour,

I still nod automatically.

But this lot are animals, know what I mean? Vermin, the lot of them,

having the nerve to do this kind of thing.

The only consolation is they’ll get 

what’s coming to them.

Luckily, she’s blinded by her rage, 

and doesn’t see my throat constricting.

I look at the figure she cuts: desperate and raving.

I try to see the human being,

to cut away the propandistic slogans,

the shaggy fringe hanging over her eyes that stops us seeing each other.

I try to see the woman who has a National Health card, orgasms and fears.

Who’s saving for a holiday on the Croatian coast, who falls asleep to reality shows,

who’s no good at parking.

I take deep breaths.

The shame turns slowly into sympathy.

If only she knew that homos pray too,

and that one of them is praying for her.

I know you saw her too, the mum in front of the Mátyás Church,

who with a firm gesture

pulled her daughter away from us,

lest we pass on to her by droplet transmission 

something she’ll have to cross herself for merely thinking about. 

Verbal abuse or spitting would not have startled me as much

as this quiet, polite revulsion

at the sight of our love.

The flash of desperate rage 

in her eyes betrayed for certain that

she was Hungarian.

Though patriotic feeling had just been welling-up in me here on the hill,

like when I was a child on August the twentieth or singing the national anthem.

But now, however deep I dig for 

that long-sought-after sense of belonging,

however good it would feel, I can no longer deny

that this castle is not ours,

that this language, the one I feel in,

mustn’t be used to speak about us. 

We don’t fit into their laws,

the soldiers are not on our side,

these walls are not here to defend us.

Never mind.

Never mind.

Come, my love, come along now,

we’ll take a picture of the view,

then head home

somewhere far from here,

where all the shame, the spattering, the hiding away

will be no more than a fridge magnet of the Citadella 

in among the children’s drawings.

And if, on occasion, it should catch my eye 

from a safe distance,

I’ll be able to think,

Ah yes, there was once a country, one that can be remembered,

and there’s this one where it’s possible to thrive,

that there was once a country whose language I used to speak to you fondly,

and there’s this other one, where I can love you without fear.

I’m that

52 kilo-

170- centimetre

perverted animal;

the vermin,

the criminal,

the repugnant

mental case.

You’re afraid of me,

you’re disgusted by me,

you snip away at my rights,

you fence in what I feel,

and your spit gleams

in long streaks on my

forehead.

Look at me.

You know me.

I’m the one 

who says sorry every time

she opens her mouth,

who takes enormous care to speak in the first person singular,

lest someone start asking questions,

who’s the first to greet,

steps aside,

gives up her seat.

Who listens.

But feel free to tell me what else I am,

I can take it.

There’s no longer any synonym,

or proposed legislation

that would surprise

or humiliate me.

When the school year starts, they’ll find me anyway,

the poorly performing students,

the fat ones,

the badly brought-up,

those with Attention Deficit Disorder, 

those starved of attention,

the mocked

and the mockers.

The children that you

conceived in a way pleasing to God,

that you clothed, 

and forgot to raise.

But go ahead and hate me, 

protect them from me 

with your immaculate white arms.

We can’t run the risk, after all, 

of a homo like me,

behind closed doors,

when it’s just the two of us,

wiping from a child’s face

the tears you caused.