Negative Space

by Luljeta Lleshanaku

  the train whistles die out,

  the buffalo-clouds of smoke turn into white, fluffy puppies.

  And the sleeves of the fathers’ never-worn cloaks

  point out a north and a south

  equally impossible.

  METAMORPHOSIS

  Summer draws near.

  With it, a yearning for life

  even though you’re still alive. Here’s another chance

  to get closer to …

  get closer to whom? To what?

  You can’t even name it.

  When you were a child, you used to draw a square

  with a chimney puffing blue smoke, and you’d call it home.

  A yellow ball—the sun, a red circle with a tail you’d call an apple,

  and a squashed apple, the heart.

  Once upon a time, everything was simple.

  Objects are still the same—we’ve only added

  the names of things the way we give intimate nicknames

  to streets and corners in a city we’ve lived in for years,

  unable to make it our own.

  And later, in the absence of hope,

  we turn objects back into abstract forms,

  into what they once were

  in their original state:

  a house puffing blue smoke, a blinding yellow ball,

  an apple and a heart.

  When there’s no hope left,

  we turn objects into art—

  a sermon we leave behind

  for the generations to come.

  JANUARY 1, DAWN

  After the celebrations,

  people, TV channels, telephones,

  the year’s recently-corrected digit

  finally falls asleep.

  Between the final night and the first dawn

  a jagged piece of sky

  as if viewed from the open mouth of a whale.

  Inside her belly and inside the belly of time,

  there’s no point worrying.

  You glide gently along. She knows her course.

  Inside her, you are digested slowly, painlessly.

  And if you’re lucky, like Jonah,

  at some point she’ll spit you out on dry land

  along with heaps of inorganic waste.

  Everything sleeps. A sweet hypothermic sleep.

  But those few still awake

  might hear the melancholy creaking of a wheelbarrow,

  someone stealing stones from a ruin

  to build new walls just a few feet away.

  AGING

  It approaches. I can feel it without seeing it,

  like feeling the presence of waves nearby.

  All the world’s rivers spill into the sea

  even your own, even the sweet waters

  that in a few seconds turn salty

  and bitter as hell in the deep.

  Every day the mirror wakes up in a bad mood.

  An endless field of frost glistens

  on the cabbages beyond the window.

  It’s the late harvest and nothing more.

  You’re alarmed:

  Do you have enough food to survive the winter?

  Enough to chew on, enough memories?

  Although you’ll need a strong stomach

  for some of them.

  Ask your mother what she knows about aging.

  Ask the elderly women of your family

  lined up so beautifully

  like silver cutlery in a cardboard box

  waiting for a dinner that may never happen …

  Ask them, how did they manage it?

  Perhaps they will give you advice.

  Or extend a hand to you,

  that same warm, clammy, deceiving reach

  that once pierced your ear as a child:

  “It doesn’t hurt a bit. Just a little sting.”

  They have nothing to give.

  Aging is too personal

  like the handkerchief, the razor, a pair of dentures.

  They don’t know that the elderly once had their own god, Saturn,

  who looked after them during their free time

  after the harvest, a meditation on time and feasts.

  It approaches … It will go on for a long while, leisurely,

  like a symphony that fills a radio channel in the late-night hours,

  rarely interrupted by brief news,

  unapologetic, then continuing on again

  where it left off, at Toccata and Fugue,

  played by a solo flute.

  FISHERMEN’S VILLAGE

  Squinty, salt-dusted windows face the distance.

  They all look seaward.

  Every third person here has the same name:

  perhaps the name of a godparent

  who cut her first lock of hair

  before the wind thickened it,

  or a stranger’s name …

  The locals, by the way, welcome the strangers,

  because they were told

  that one of them who once walked barefoot on water

  used to load the sardine boats

  with swift hands.

  Foreigners are easily identified;

  unlike the locals, their clothes are white, blue, jet black.

  And sometimes,

  they make you a gift of rosaries or cigars.

  Once, one of them

  left a pair of shoes behind

  and the whole village gathered to play the lottery.

  When someone with an already good pair of shoes won,

  the young men who had been keenly following the show

  kicked the sand in anger,

  “What the hell? It’s not fair!”

  Sand everywhere. All day long,

  overturned boats on the shore

  eat sand. Night stars feed on the sand.

  The boats beached here since the last war

  people remember brought

  Omega watches strapped

  to soldiers’ wrists, and herpes

  that spread from flesh to flesh

  faster than wind

  and faster than famine.

  Cats purr behind doors.

  Streets reek of fish and yet there are no fish.

  Noontime, a man dozes on a sofa in the yard.

  His wife sits at his feet, mending

  the net with needle and thread,

  which she cuts with her teeth.

  Eyes half-open, he gazes at her

  realizing here is the real cause: the large hole in the net,

  a hole first torn two thousand years ago after a prosperous fishing night,

  when things were sorted out much like they are today:

  some cursed with luck and some blessed with mercy.

  COMMIT TO MEMORY

  These words are carved on the gravestone

  of a Roman woman from 135 B.C.:

  “Her parents named her Claudia.

  She loved her husband dearly.

  She bore two sons.

  Was charming in conversation, and patient.

  Kept a good house. Spun wool.”

  The women I’ve known

  can be described just as plainly with a single line:

  M. who shined her copper pots and pans with sand.

  L. who dreamed so much about her sons she was punished with a short life.

  S. who made the best pickles.

  H. who wouldn’t shut up about her brother’s mysterious death.

  K. who used to peel fuzz off of faces with an egg-and-sugar mask.

  F. the first to discover that a white dress goes best with yellow roses.

  D. who ironed a perfect line on her husband’s sleeves,

  even when she knew he was going out with another woman.

  P. who got along well with her mother-in-law.

  S. who had an abortion every six months.

  T. with a sweet laugh and always a run on her stockings.

  N. who roasted good coffee when she had any.


  R. who secretly used to sell her own blood.

  Z. who picked up her son’s guts with her own hands

  the day he was hit by a freight train.

  With a brief single line

  like an old telegram, twenty cents a word,

  and full of typing errors made by the post office staff.

  As if that were the only way to remember them.

  With a single, uninterrupted line

  like Don Quixote in Picasso’s hands.

  You think it’s that easy?

  CITIES

  Cities are more or less the same:

  lights, garbage, broken windows on the second floor of the music school,

  street vendors, banks with red marble staircases,

  bus stops, the smell of freshly baked bread equalizing all,

  bridges, women who age in their eyes and men who wither in their voices,

  billboards, grudges that rot in vegetable cases on street markets,

  rain staining roof tiles and bleaching graves,

  a municipal band that’s been playing “The March of the Tartars” for thirty years,

  the clocktower with its head in the clouds like a dervish in a trance, fresh lemonade,

  and an ambulance parked between two worlds.

  From the center, gradually, my house and everyone else’s

  shifts to the periphery,

  toward the city’s limbs, its hands

  not needing a language

  to point out where it hurts or itches.

  Each city taught you something:

  the first about death at a train station—in broad daylight;

  the second, how to live;

  and the third,

  the agnostic respite between the two.

  You conquered the first one at night, in the dark;

  the tame snakes on pharmacy walls

  showed you the way.

  The other, much earlier, without buttoning yourself.

  A new accent split your face in two

  like the line that parts your hair.

  Each city left you with a scar:

  The first a scratch on your eyebrow;

  the second your hardened shoulders;

  and the third, some logical gaps in your syntax.

  But you left no mark on them.

  Cities don’t recognize you until the moment you flee,

  when you escape in a hurry

  and leave behind a single shoe,

  abandoning the magic trick halfway through.

  ANATOMICAL CUT

  Rexhep’s knife is razor sharp. He’s a third-generation butcher.

  Effortlessly, with its fine tip, he separates flesh from bone,

  thigh from shoulder, heart from ribs,

  a kosher day from another “it could have been worse”

  through an anatomical cut.

  An unsold calf head hanging on a hook

  acts as a pledge between the living and the dead

  until evening.

  Some clients show no respect, demanding, “Take out the fat!”

  the same way you would ask someone

  to wipe their shoes carefully before entering the house.

  Others simply love to chat.

  From his father he learned how to cut without losses

  and other small secrets of the trade,

  secrets stolen but not mentioned

  like how to slam meat on the scale, fast and hard.

  A small deceit; just an ounce. No big deal.

  His life is simple, made up of speed and knives,

  knives sharpened with care each morning

  so that, later in heaven, it will be easier

  to piece the past back together on Judgment Day.

  But when he returns home

  with his hands and the status quo washed of blood,

  he calculates the finances for studies

  his son has no wish to complete;

  he plans to buy a house where the stench of meat

  won’t conjure crows in his dreams,

  and, before sleeping, forcefully pulls his wife’s hips toward him,

  just her hips, and the hand on the scale points to an ounce of excess.

  Small secrets of self-deceit no one ever talks about—

  not even a father who knows the world better than anyone else,

  from inside-out, entrails and all.

  SELF-PORTRAIT IN WOVEN FABRICS

  My life is a wardrobe

  where the clothes are picked out

  with a quick glance and hardly

  ever with the slightest touch.

  This never-worn silk shirt

  wants a man’s jacket over its shoulders

  to end its flowering moment.

  It hasn’t bloomed yet and never will.

  Throw it away, don’t think twice!

  This décolleté acrylic blouse

  matches a smile twice my size

  and front teeth with impeccable enamel.

  Years ago, the opposite was true.

  Toss it, it’s useless.

  And this dress was worn only once—

  to a romantic dinner.

  Another date like that

  won’t happen for a thousand years,

  and by then, the dress will be out of fashion anyway.

  Dump it, it’s just taking up space.

  This white cardigan is pure nostalgia for the past;

  the blue one looks to the future.

  They suck the oxygen out of the room at night.

  Get rid of both of them!

  This black corduroy jacket, cheap

  threads from a second-hand store. Keep it!

  It’s always easier to hide behind someone else’s skin.

  This eccentric shirt with its black-and-white lines—

  an alibi for finding yourself in two places at once.

  Keep it! Too late to change your style!

  This coat, heavy like inland fog,

  two sizes too big, too expensive,

  bought in a hurry for a ceremony,

  hung only in hallways.

  I’m still paying for it. Let it be!

  These classic high-heel shoes

  just have no instinct to return. Out they go!

  Throw out these fine boots, too—

  they only brought you bad luck from the start.

  Sailors are right in saying,

  “Don’t put on new shoes when crossing unknown seas!”

  And here are the gray clothes, my favorites, one after the other …

  Without them, I’m exposed, like a drooling dog!

  They’re old, but must be kept!

  And this scarf in bold colors

  like a humid, crowded, and chaotic city

  is a gift from someone who

  wanted to get lost somewhere through me.

  Throw it away! There’s no space for it!

  And this small purse that holds almost nothing:

  a handkerchief, a phone number, a tube of foot cream.

  Keep it, this spare alter ego—

  it might come in handy one day.

  And red … what’s a red sweater doing in my drawer?

  Looking for a fight?

  Throw it out, what are you waiting for?

  And finally, wrinkle-free, everyday

  comfortable clothes that never disappoint.

  A string of compromises that have taken the shape of my body.

  Keep them for sure—you’re not allowed to toss these!

  On the floor, the discarded clothes evaporate, a gigantic

  womb that held a woman’s fantasies, now miscarried.

  And the few items left

  can finally move their elbows freely in the dresser

  like gondoliers on a perfect strip of water.

  But to this day I haven’t understood

  if my mother was complaining or making excuses

  when she mumbled, “It’s pure wool, hand-made,”

&
nbsp; whenever she cleaned her only suit with a few drops of gasoline.

  WATER AND CARBON

  1.

  Revelation came to you on a September day,

  not on top of a barren mountain but in the chemistry lab

  during the last class period when you were starving,

  when, after Hamlet’s monologue and equations with two unknowns,

  it became clear there was nothing more to learn.

  “Human beings are simply made of water and carbon,” he declared,

  and drew a long formula with many holes on the chalkboard

  that looked like a metal trap for rabbits.

  He was the messenger, St. John the Chemistry Teacher,

  drenched in sweat, his belt buckled tight.

  Face cleanly shaved, hair trimmed and parted flat with Figaro oil …

  Wasn’t he supposed to look a little more miserable?

  Wasn’t he supposed to have a long beard?

  Wasn’t a bush nearby supposed to have burst into flames?

  “Simply water and carbon!

  Maybe even a little magnesium, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus …

  In short, little choice involved.”

  And he chucked the chalk into the air

  as if a key to a door without hinges.

  He clasped his hands. Mission accomplished!

  The last words already spoken.

  Now disperse and spread the good news!

  Or go to hell—who cares!

  A bitter relief in the air, the scent of freshly cut grass.

  Suddenly, we no longer knew who we were;

  suddenly we were all the same.

  So why the eternal worry on my mother’s face?

  And what sort of chemical compounds

  were Adler and Schopenhauer talking about in the other classroom

  from which only a thin wall separated us

  or was it an entire existence?

  2.

  Water and carbon. Measurable.

  When you’re born they measure your weight, your height and heartbeat;

  they encase and stamp you with a belly button like a leaden seal

  you have no authority to open! (You have no authority over yourself.)

  They measure your temperature, in the shade of course,

  your sugar levels, albumen, iron, reflexes on your knees,

  your tongue, twice, before and after a meal.

  (What does this have to do with speaking?!)

  They measure the circumference of your head

  to fit you with a hat so you can think with a cool brain,

  and your chest for a suit, the tailor’s

  icy cold hands tickling your armpits and ribs,

  and making you nervous.

  They fill your clothes with padding

  so no one can hear what’s going on inside you.

  Double-breasted, single-breasted, spare buttons, fake pockets on your pants.