“Barcode: Embargo” by Lena Petrović
Lena is a human rights lawyer and poet born and raised in Belgrade, Serbia (former Yugoslavia), now based in Washington D.C. Back in Belgrade, she was providing legal aid to refugees. Lena’s poems and prose poems appeared in literary magazines in Southeast Europe, such as Enklava, Strane, A Priori, Koraci, and Sovremeni dijalozi. Lena’s first poetry book is forthcoming with PPM Enklava publisher (Serbia). Some of the themes that occupy her writing are social justice, utopia, consumerism, migration, and identity.
Author Foreword:
The ongoing war in Europe, inflation, and economic crisis may have prompted me to write this piece, as a reflection on my teenage years in Belgrade in the 90s. During the Yugoslav wars, several rounds of international sanctions were imposed against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for its aggression. They banned international trade, scientific cooperation, sports and cultural exchanges, air and visa-free travel. I would like this poem to elevate human struggle against void and destruction.
Your hands full of worthless cash. Borders are sealed, price tags lost in fire, supermarkets emptied offering pickles alone. No one studies the shelves or shops for fun. You’re looking for the exit, ride to a bar. There is no traffic. Gas stations are run by the warlords. Boulevards smell of sulfur and distant explosions have you on high alert.
To manage your cravings, retail shelves are void. The line for milk starts with the sunrise. Early birds count zeroes on the banknotes. At eight in the morning, patience is out of stock, bread has gone underground. Your family starts worshiping the holy trinity — flour, water, and yeast — making a fritter miracle when nothing else sustains.
Extravagant foreign aid: a shop line turns into a street parade. Neighbors carry flour sacks like rugby balls. Grannies cuddle oil boxes like pups. Ladies seize sugar cubes like stolen diamonds. At the register, you plead guilty, living under an ugly, fearmongering ruler, and watching his pretty television. Beware of a hissing can!
Smugglers are your sole saviors. They exchange the paper money for Deutschmarks. Chocolate, salami, and jeans gleam in their car trunks, duty-free delis. As you chew an illegal snack, the embargo enlightens you: it is the lack of supply that creates the demand. At first, you are isolated and hungry, then ambitious and capable.
The solitary pickle jar whets aching appetite, stirs anger, propels unrest. As you taunt and boo on the main square, trying to reclaim your future, suicide rate increases, buddies disappear, leaders travel the world. At buffet tables, the heads talk ceasefire and export-import games. The most charming one toasts to their newest success story.
