God stiffened Pharaoh’s heart: he did not let them go.
\nThe more he resisted, the more God’s power grew.
\nThen God left them alone again in the desert
\nto separate wheat from weeds among his people.<\/p>\n
The cure for a dog’s bite is Pasteur’s vaccine,
\nnutrition imbalance \u2013 always the reason for wars.
\nNew technology causes floods and earthquakes.
\nAnd nadir is the reason for love.<\/p>\n
The \u201cBig Wave” was Hokusai’s reason for hunger.
\nBlindness in another painter invented the hard brush.
\nThe reason behind all sufferings is another suffering
\nbetween generations \u2013 the silver wheel of initiation.<\/p>\n
The reason behind Colombo’s journey was not America,
\nnor India of gold, as he pretended.
\nThe reason was tobacco in exchange for mirrors.
\nIt didn’t matter if he realized this or not. <\/p>\n
Once in November, the reason and I were the same thing,
\nwe were one. I was Rome burning, while Nero played the fiddle.
\nAbandoned in myself. Happiness is not a reason.
\nAnd what comes after happiness anyway? <\/p>\n
Now, when thinking of these, I am sitting next to a Sicilian guy
\non the Alitalia flight 2389, from Rome to New York.
\nPerhaps there’s reason here too:
\nhis bruised palms, his one-way ticket, and his garlic breath
\nkeep me close to the earth and far from reasons
\nfor a while. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Two By Two<\/strong><\/p>\n He grew up in the town beside the water, A long summer split in two, On Sundays, four women wash clothes Lost, by the side of the water, a confused child. The hair-clippings in the yard, on a sunny day. The rest of his life He’ll follow them with his Noah eyes, <\/p>\n Last Journey Of Ramesses<\/strong><\/p>\n Because of threatening water For some hours In a few days But the intelligent eye Like the folding lines in an over-used map Statue or statuette to that blind map circulating in pieces <\/p>\n Flashback 3<\/strong><\/p>\n Heart of November. Wind blows like a shuffling of eras. I try to hide my happiness under white fuzz If I struggle to part the curtains a little <\/p>\n Self-Portrait In Silica <\/strong><\/p>\n My portrait hasn’t changed much, Perhaps another time, I won’t be invisible anymore, <\/p>\n Narration In The Third Person<\/strong><\/p>\n It begins A woman approaching forty She makes peace with everything: keeps her drawers tidy, \u2026 when you approach forty, <\/p>\n A Couple Of Deep Breaths<\/strong> <\/p>\n The city has expanded. A single bus stop separates it from the cemetery – A widow waits there, seated on a bench. Clenched in her fist: When she gets off, she turns her head to memorize the license plate In winter, no one comes at the station. It’s not clear who gave the first nod <\/p>\n In A Nameless Place<\/strong><\/p>\n Here, you don’t need to fill out any forms, Foreigners can’t violate There are no locks here. What can be stolen Cities without billboards, without pretty women I greet my neighbors. They don’t return the favor. Here they are on my desk, And finally, oddly enough, I don’t know how to name this place. <\/p>\n Translated by Ani Gjika.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n For some hours By Luljeta Lleshanaku<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[484,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maintenant","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwhere people answer questions with another question. <\/p>\n
\nand on the river’s edges, leaves graying like sideburns.<\/p>\n
\nslapping their men’s shirts on the river rocks.
\nFour other women do the same thing, surrounded by foam,
\ntaking revenge against husbands who don’t exist.<\/p>\n
\nHis name multiplies, his name has a shape
\nin the mother’s palms \u2013 rounded as if a crater around her mouth
\nwhen she calls him. <\/p>\n
\nA huge pair of scissors in the father’s hand. No mirror.
\nHe sits in a chair; his feet hanging down,
\nwithout touching the ground.
\nYou are safe; the future can’t find you here
\nthe way a dog can’t pick up
\nsomeone’s traces in the water.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nhe will have a duplicate view of things:
\ntwo houses, two trees to eclipse the fence, two truths,
\ntwo women to fall in love with\u2026
\nWho is the reflex of whom?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nas they enter and leave, two by two, like the animals do,
\neach time the boat strands in shallow water.<\/p>\n
\nthey broke the statue of Ramesses into blocks
\nand moved it to a safe and dignified place
\nfar from where it was created. <\/p>\n
\nhis Egyptian nose
\nhung between sky and earth
\ndrawing the attention of a derrick-man and a part-time porter.
\nHis scepter hung there too, the scepter of a man who once said:
\n\u201cI carried away those whom my sword had spared
\nas numerous captives pinioned like birds before my horses”.<\/p>\n
\nall his broken parts will reunite
\nand he will be the Great Ramesses again,
\nthe star of morning and evening,
\nambushed by the camera’s sanguine flashes
\nlike knives in a sailors’ tavern. <\/p>\n
\nwill see the geometric cuts between the blocks,
\nnot the sculpture itself but the transportation marks,
\nasking: \u201cHow heavy was it? and, \u201cHow did they get it here?”<\/p>\n
\nwhere mountains were flattened a long time ago,
\nroads and their conventional symbols have disappeared
\nand the names of cities coagulated.<\/p>\n
\nthe last confession doesn’t belong to him, but to the shoulders of others<\/p>\n
\nwhich shows our only landscape
\nand the speed with which we traverse it.<\/p>\n
\nSnow and my mother’s face
\nwait in the background
\nto test their philosophy
\nof inevitability.
\nLights, like a line of ants, lead
\nto the dining room. I am the bride.
\nIt’s the end of the ceremony. And as I prepare to sleep
\nothers carefully remove twenty one pins from my head,
\nas many as the years I’ve lived.
\nI know almost nothing of life;
\nknow only that in sharp turns
\nexperience matters less than two burning lights in the chest. <\/p>\n
\nlike an orange, carefully peeled.
\nI have emerged cunningly from my genetic prophecy,
\nholding on tight to the belly of the ram
\nout of the Cyclops’ cave. <\/p>\n
\nwith two well-manicured fingers,
\nI will see two shadows moving in harmony on the asphalt
\nthe musician and the cello after the concert:
\nman and the anti-prophecy.<\/p>\n
\nmy head still tilted a little as though asking for forgiveness.
\nWhy forgiveness? Forgiveness for what?
\nForgiveness for being in the wrong place at the right time,
\nor in the right place at the wrong time,
\nor both? Forgiveness for being present
\nwhen asked to be invisible?
\n\u201cDo not bite the spoon when you eat, do not dream out loud,
\nwhen you burn \u2013 do not smoke, when you bathe \u2013 do not foam,
\nwhen you crumble \u2013 pick up your feathers together,
\nwhen the elastic breaks and the soul drops at your feet, keep walking,
\ndo not look back, and trust me, life is easier
\nif you’re invisible.”
\nSo I followed the road I was told to follow.
\nGlass. At first, I was the glass on elementary school windows, smudged with swears
\nmade visible only by dust.
\nThen, a monocle \u2013 what one eye trusted, the other one questioned.
\nAnd I came late to writing… I was the thick glass
\nof a telescope
\nthat drops stars on the palm of your hand.
\nThe eye \u2013 the same tired one,
\nand the stars the same \u2013 millions of light years away.
\nStill, I’m not false news, I’ve only arrived too soon,
\nand distance is my only deception. <\/p>\n
\nthe slippery boundary between two worlds.
\nI’ll have a voice, a color, I’ll be read even on rainy days
\nwell aware that tilting my head timidly at the photographer
\nis only an alibi. <\/p>\n
\nwhen you start searching for a darkness
\nthat resembles you, as searching for rhyme at the end of a following line of verse,
\nfor a little music, or the exchange of carbon dioxide
\nbetween flowers in the evening.
\nIt \u2013 the feeling of turning forty.
\nAnd it’s only a matter of style
\nthe way years pile on top of one another,
\nbecause no clashes are expected, or noise,
\nbecause the hardest blow has already been taken
\nthe way statues take it, nose-first.<\/p>\n
\nis a shadow in search of its object,
\na monologue in the third person;
\na series of lessons, little notes in red ink underlined
\non the right margin. Spaces between lines are like flesh, like the body \u2013
\nbrief waiting periods behind a dentist’s door
\nfrom where the stench of arsenic
\ncomes and goes.
\nExperience…, experience…, experience…,
\nsmall zig-zags and the sense of accomplishment
\nwith which the silkworm nibbles at mulberry leaves
\nstarting at the tip. <\/p>\n
\npractices yoga,
\ntraining her soul as a runway
\nfor takeoffs and landings.<\/p>\n
\nor better yet: if you approach forty,
\nbecause being forty is not often required,
\nit’s a choice
\nlike choosing a bench at the park,
\nthe one that faces away from the street
\nif we’re not waiting for someone. <\/p>\n
\na couple of deep breaths.<\/p>\n
\nmoney for the ticket. The first six months she used a pass.
\nWhen she arrives home, she’ll rinse herself to her armpits with alcohol
\nalthough she has no cuts on her body.<\/p>\n
\nas she’d memorize her roll number.
\nHer breasts and flowers droop their heads.
\nA soft rain falls \u2013 an apostrophe
\nthat disrupts the lecture between two worlds.<\/p>\n
\nThe bus driver waits there habitually, the engine on, half a cigarette
\nmoist between his lips.
\nAfter a brief moment, the door shuts automatically, the springs pull back in place,
\nlike the last words of a verdict. <\/p>\n
\nthe city to the cemetery, or the cemetery to the city. A tango duel
\nin which, while the arms push, thighs pull
\nlike currents in neutral waters. <\/p>\n
\nor lose patience while someone takes your fingerprints.<\/p>\n
\na place that’s built of breaths;
\neven temple stones were hauled from afar, kilometers away perhaps,
\nto taste the geometry of shadows. <\/p>\n
\nfrom the city-state of dead poets?
\nAt the post office, boxes are removed only when wet
\nlike bandages on scuffed eyebrows.<\/p>\n
\nselling anti-cavity smiles. Here, there are only streets,
\nstreets that aim toward the periphery, the boundaries of cognition \u2013
\nfor the dictatorship of a blade of grass. <\/p>\n
\nWhat’s the point of wishing well to someone
\nwho lives and dies within a day, perhaps within an hour?<\/p>\n
\non the backs of books, their photos purposely taken,
\nthe garden of Eden in the background,
\nstuck like receipts against clothes hanging at the dry-cleaner’s. <\/p>\n
\nA nation without martyrs has no name.
\nDeserters, yes, branded, like Spartan deserters once were,
\nwith half-shaved faces–
\none, at once, with light and darkness.<\/p>\n![\"dsc_3425\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/dsc_3425.jpg\")
<\/a>
\nABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong>
\nLuljeta Lleshanaku<\/strong> was born in 1968, in Albania. She has worked as a journalist, and lately as a television author and screenwriter. She is the author of six collections of poetry in her country. Some of her works are published in other countries, such as: Antipastorale<\/EM> in Italy (2006), Kinder der Natur<\/em> in Austria (2010), and two other books published by New Directions in United States: Fresco<\/em> (2002) and Child of nature<\/em> (2010). She is the winner of national literary prize \u201cSilver Pen 2000″ in Albania and the international prize \u201cKristal Vilenice 2009″ in Slovenia. She is also nominated for the Best Translated Book Award 20111 in USA and also nominated for the European poetry prize \u201cThe European Poet of Freedom, 2012″, in Poland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"dsc_3425\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/dsc_3425-150x150.jpg\")
<\/a>Because of threatening water
\nthey broke the statue of Ramesses into blocks
\nand moved it to a safe and dignified place
\nfar from where it was created. <\/p>\n
\nhis Egyptian nose
\nhung between sky and earth
\ndrawing the attention of a derrick-man and a part-time porter.
\nHis scepter hung there too, the scepter of a man who once said:
\n\u201cI carried away those whom my sword had spared
\nas numerous captives pinioned like birds before my horses\u201d\u009d.<\/p>\n