Ani Gjika

i

Çimi ate ants every day:

he picked them up with two fingers,

looked at them first, then staring into space,

thoughtlessly put them into his mouth.

He always chose the black, slow-moving ones,

maybe because they were quiet and slow

like him. Last week, his runaway mother

returned and took Çimi out to dinner.

They were sitting silently at the table,

and when she finally said, I’ve missed you!

a black sea of ants crawled out of Çimi’s mouth,

drowning the space between them.

ii

On rainy days, we'd go to Xhilda's place:

me, Elona, Jonida, Fiori. Xhilda had a balcony.

We'd go out there and talk to the boys.

Xhilda lived on the first floor.

So we could touch hands with the boys.

Except the balcony had iron bars because

you must protect yourselves from thieves.

So we could touch hands with the boys

with bars touching ours.

iii

He must have been nine years old

when he dipped a cat in gasoline, set it on fire

and watched it run around in circles.

The mad cat dance, he called it,

come watch the mad cat dance, he told us,

but we ran away leaving him there alone

to watch the cat spin and hear it cry

from its stomach. He buried it afterwards

sobbing all through the digging.

iv

We played forgotten games, chalked genitals

on the street, nobody learned a thing in school,

nobody ever moved away till Miss Luli moved in

to teach history in red heels, ponytail and glasses,

hands like orchids, and we raced to buy notebooks

at Pandi’s, down Avenue of the Owls. We loved

her little mouth when she spoke of cathedrals

and one Jack the Ripper, and when it rained,

we used to watch her pay attention to each drop

till she’d forget to talk. Everyone stopped going out

to play, everyone started to get 10s, except for Çimi

who skipped class one morning, shirt tucked

under his perfect whale of a belly, bucket in hand,

knife packed in his shoes. He went straight

into Miss Luli's garden and slit her roses’ throats

then threw sardines all over them and left a note:

“So that you remember, Miss,

so that we’re history. Together! Love, Çimi.”

It’s snowing in a way that reminds me

of people who rarely complain.

I imagine the oldest woman eating bread: silent,

half asleep, softly chewing mngna, mngna, mngna.

I am thankful for snow

and the black stillness of evergreens

the way they line up on the street

here in my New England.

I have made it mine, the way

a young girl finds someone’s lipstick

and makes it hers.

It doesn’t matter that it’s half used

it matters that it’s lipstick and she wears it

down to her chin.

engines shutting off in a tunnel

lights gone out at a party

my father’s hand sliding off mine

go home now, he says, you know the way

red poppies reaped off with the grass

shutting down the casket, burying it away

I am afraid of your silence,

the moment after the glass has broken,

the second before I realize that car will crash

I am afraid of starting something –

my hands are like two continents

swimming farther and farther off the map.

I have no memory of it.

I believe a river caught up with us

when we curved the foot of the mountain.

Men and women got off the bus to drink.

My father cupped his hands

and I gulped mouthfuls.

Snow patches led the way to the cool

black smoke of the woods. Over our heads

eagles played tag with the white sun.

The way we changed the valley

entering it like winter shadows.

I never dream of it

but I remember being watched

as I stood at the edge of water

stirring images with my foot.

Inside a Buddhist temple, inside a cave, among

tall golden statues, I feel nothing. I think of nothing.

I look around, wonder if taking photographs

is allowed. On their knees, eyes shut,

natives and tourists rock back and forth

as though straining together to give birth.

I imagine a single firefly stumbling into the cave,

its pulsing light rearranging space inside the mountain.

On my way out, I find a scrap of blue paper

on the stairs, fragments in Thai script

that I can't read. I slip it in the pocket of my jeans,

wondering if a monk wrote a list of things he needs.

I hope it's a monk's attempt at poetry. Then

I'd understand the tearing it in pieces.

They have survived one another.

The earth holds them the way it holds

children: gladly and curiously affected.

His silver head piles its years on her lap.

His body seems borrowed, already an absence.

Her right hand maps his temples, his forehead.

What does the grass ask for, and the Japanese

knotweed behind them? His hand inside his pocket,

what is it holding, or her eyes under those glasses?

Here, he will sleep forever

and the shadows of trees will never

stretch long enough to enter their bodies.

Here, everything is an instant of tension –

shapes continuously touching, perching

so that one's weight never cancels the other’s.

Before writing, before toys, I used to draw stars.

Mami sat knitting me a sweater, advising

from time to time how to make an angle.

Politics on TV scratched at the screen.

Babi listened carefully, his body stiff, upright.

But I kept drawing, trying to perfect the stars.

I saw a gold star over a black two-headed eagle

on a red flag. Big men and women rose up

clapping: Long Live the Labor Party!

Mami, thoughts under her glasses, kept knitting.

Babi listened pale on the edge of his seat.

And erasing stars, I drew them all over again.

That year winter threatened our small house.

I heard winds howl, but I had drawn enough stars

to burn in the stove to keep us warm.

We sat around our small table,

the balcony French doors wide open

to the breeze, the flies.

I could hear the neighbors above

and my friend Miri, chasing a tire down the street.

Each family eavesdropped on the next like clockwork.

My mother ladled soup in four bowls.

I remember her white ankles

taking her

in and out of the kitchen

and my father

never moving to help her.

He liked to watch her

like I did.

We sat together like this only on Sundays.

Grandmother translated for us from Greek:

“throw your bread on running waters

and you'll see that it comes back to you”.

She'd hide the book under her pillow,

then finally sit down to eat.

Nobody I loved was taken into the woods and shot.

In the summer, I met my half-brother

for the first time, his head shaved like a soldier's.

He came back to us when I didn't know

how to know him. At supper, my father

didn't know how to help either:

he made jokes about girls

then asked about his grades.

When my parents visit us,

I prepare a meal, pass the bread, wait for a toast

and sit quietly, like my father, listening

to everyone's insignificant confessions.

We hardly ever talk of his son

who lives permanently away.

Somehow all absence of speech

replaces his absence,

or everyone's regrets,

or everything that's been thrown away.

At the landing, they turn to wave goodbye

looking up at us.

My father's silver head looks smaller

every time I see him.

The parenthesis around my mother's mouth

more prominent now

from withholding.

My husband shuts the door.

It's windy out. I part the curtains

and watch them get in the car, watch

whatever is rushing against them.