Catches up with my eating habits,

Is here to devour me again;

Fumes of Hell’s Kitchen on a cold February midnight

Breezing through my hands and paralyzed nostrils…

I am in love with a madman

Who tells fables about the ancient ruins of

City Bank halls and who claims he discovered

God in another galaxy, next to ours.

At home, at last, stars are very quiet tonight.

They watch me closely, condescending

As I bang at my typewriter this never ending story

About two cities which I’ve never visited in my tired spirit.

The cats I’ve never had, observe me from my armchairs

Which I sold in Paris whose postcards

I admired in Abijan, where I never lived , for a month.

Several lions have sniffed my bones

After the good supper they had at the poetry reading

In New York, one summer, and the man

I loved the best was cleaning their paws

Without humiliation because he believed

In my blurred vision saved by the lions

For his inquisitive mind.

Nina Zivancevic

Divine insomnia is part of the anthology DISEASE, organised by me, poet/doctor Rushika Wick and Serbian poet Ana Seferovic. Avaliable for sale on Carnaval Press‘ website.

Poet, essayist, fiction writer, playwright, art critic, translator and contributing editor to NY ARTS magazine from Paris, Serbian-born Nina Zivancevic published 15 books of poetry. She has also written three books of short stories, two novels and a book of essay on Milosh Crnjanski (her doctoral thesis) published in Paris, New York and Belgrade. The recipient of three literary awards, a former assistant and secretary to Allen Ginsberg, she has also edited and participated in numerous anthologies of contemporary world poetry.

As editor and correspondent she has contributed to New York Arts Magazine, Modern Painters, American Book Review, East Village Eye, Republique de lettres. She has lectured at Naropa University, New York University, the Harriman Institute and St.John’s University in the U.S., she has taught English language and literature at La Sorbonne ( Paris I and V) and the History of Avant-garde Theatre at Paris 8 University in France and at numerous universities and colleges in Europe. She has actively worked for theatre and radio: 4 of her plays were performed and emitted in the U.S. and Great Britain. In New York she had worked with the “Living Theatre” and the members of the “Wooster Group”. She lives and works in Paris.