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 […]
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. […]
Born and raised in Albania, Ani Gjika moved to the U.S. at age eighteen and studied poetry writing at Simmons College and Boston University. She is the recipient of a 2010 Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship and winner of a 2010 Robert Fitzgerald Translation Prize. Her first book, Bread on Running Waters (Fenway Press, 2013), was […]