KNOT Magazine
Fall Issue 2022
Laureta Petoshati
It's been a long time
It's been a long time, and I haven't heard from you.
The birds that have built their nests under our eaves
and intercrossed just their flight trajectories anew
but haven’t seen and heard each other in flitting eves.
I haven’t seen you in a long time, just to wave.
The day lacks shadow and the night lacks superb sight,
it’s easier to talk to those who are fleeing into the grave,
than to living creatures who are afraid of the light.
Lemon
The branches of lemon stiffened by blossoms,
the spring in white dress sits on it up to the hilt,
seducing the petals by April sparks, so awesome,
all of them, meek, petite, with roseate gilt.
There birds of sea passage, bees and hornets
crowed together by pollens, fragrances,
so the secret sins, all the rest excited, careless,
by the kiss of sun and delicate branches.
The blossoms form the tinny grains, the muse flirts
in youthful folly and captivating caress,
girls’ breasts are shaking, trembling under shirts,
the lemon’s nipple is brittle in sensual guess.
But fled the summer, touching and caress,
now ripe, shaped, juicy, excellent,
the lemon fruits are moaning of grief, what a mess!
They are sleek, green, but love is absent...
Lemon cries inside, sheds teardrops as hell
by the hostile, crimpy and biting winter
in lone languidness faded and turned pale,
by anger became a sour fruit, so bitter.
Laureta Petoshati is an Albanian poet and prose writer. She was born in Vlora
Albania where still lives recently. After graduating from Industrial High School in
her hometown, Laureta Petoshati attended Faculty of Engineering in University of
Tirana for about five years and received a Master Degree in Civil Engineering
(Water Engineering) in 1987. She quitted her work as water engineer in 1991, so
few years after she got the Master Degree to begin a career as a free lance
translator and writer and from that time to nowadays she is committed to
translations, literature and journalism. She published her first poetry collection
Goddess of Heaven in 1996, as well her historical novel Return to Ventotene in
2012. She worked journalist in several newspapers and reporter in Vlora Channel
Television mainly in her hometown Vlora. She continues to publish her poetry
cycles in many national and even in some international newspapers such Albanian
American newspaper - "Illyria" in New York. As a poet she is a winner of one
competition which took place in her hometown and as a translator she has won two
national competitions. The beautiful landscape of her seashore hometown has a
strong and tonic presence in her poems. She likes rhyming in the poetry because
according to her the poem is like a sea, you cannot imagine it without waves.