Two photographs

I showered/ I dusted/ I am without illusions/ I’ve left me alone

 

I showered
I dusted
I am without illusions
I’ve left me alone

Dust settles
taking up yesterday’s space

What is yesterday in a poem

What is beauty but sun
for the common is often lovely and unpraised

Someone slept here the night before
Change those pillowcases and sleep opposite, feet to head
At the end of her life, she yelled
Turn me! Turn me!
She says the sunrise means no thing.
Night and day: turn me! turn me!
Now I wear this gold
all this gold on my wrist
all this gold on my ears
all this gold on my fingers
The sunrise—
it doesn't capture a thing.

Your name is dearer to me
than what is perfectly true
so I call out from under here.

Don’t learn more words he says.
This summer he died and the summer after she followed.
We were translating a transcript from the other bed:

Përzhitje                                                                     digestion
Përzjerje                                                                     mixture
Ngatëresë                                                                    mess


Djersë e mëditsve ne fabrik                                         sweat of the factory workers


Për në salle të kinemasë                                              in the cinema


Vari / Vargë / Vargje                                                Grave / Range / Verse


                                                                                    The actor forgets his role
                                                                                    His eyes closed under the shower
                                                                                    of a Mexican hotel

                                                                                    End

Burgë, fabrikë ose Meksikë

Përndjekje—e kopton perndjekjen?                            The thing which comes after the other thing
                                                                                    End
                                                                                    Either follows or chases

                                                                                    What is the difference?

                                                                                    Chasing is faster than following


Xhelatë jetimorësh                                                   the man who beats orphans
                                                                                    the fascist fiancée

Gjini federuar                                                             [                              ]

Per jetë a vdekje                                                        For Life or death
                                                                                    Death or life
                                                                                    Ask your uncle

What time is it?                                                          11:30

Bring me the second half so I won’t be hungry
for dinner

                                                                                    As long as we have strength we continue

I told her to eat to be strong, but this word also means power where I’m from
and power looks upon life blindly.

I will never see her sitting there again I say,
but who am I and what’s there?

In one photograph,
I'm on your breast having eaten
tugging slightly on his shirt
your hand on my knee,
crooked smile
eyebrows ribbons.
You took pride in your appearance
I can't imagine you in this room now
but there is a desk against the door.

In another,
hand slightly tucked into coat jacket,
rolling your tongue along the sides of your mouth,
you didn't listen to music
I don't know if you liked it
I never asked you though
I don't regret it
I feel all your knowledge inside me
but what to do with it?

I heard water has perfect memory
across sky, sea, body.
It rained 14 days straight
then one week of sun before you went.

I never was so wet
nor so elegant,
never did I suffer a grief so round:
I lost my childhood
you lost your death.


 

 

About the author

Ami Xherro is a poet, artist, translator; a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Comparative Literature; a co-founder of the Toronto Experimental Translation Collective; a co-editor of Barricade: A Journal of Antifascism and Translation. Ami’s chapbook The Unfinished Flame of the Lower Oceans was published by Swimmers Group in 2017; Ami’s first full-length book of poetry is forthcoming in 2023 with Guernica Editions.