In My Hermetic Studio

In My Hermetic Studio







In my hermetic studio
I am like a canned fish, my love
Turned into a bookworm wrinkled with age
Within four walls, behind closed shutters
Item that is traded and wholly wasted
In poetry lines and delirious state
Upside-down I slip in the air
My feet don’t touch soil
Singing a lyrical song in my deepest despair

I am given for rent in the black market
Possibly I’ll be sold by auction, in parts
Play lottery, perhaps you strike it lucky my love

Although no pact with destiny on my part

Shriveling in the airless room
as a snake
My soul, do you breathe or not?
Are you hereabouts?
If you are still alive
Stand up and look at my eyes
constantly fabricated, dizzy, and materialized

Writhing like a bird
in this cage-studio abyss
Robinson Crusoe of loneliness and crucifixion
in Emptiness

Granit Zela

Granit Zela is a contemporary Albanian poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist and translator. Born in 1979 in Kukes, northeast of Albania, he was graduated from British and American Studies and Albanian Literature in Tirana. He obtained a Ph.D. degree in Literature on the poetics of the American postmodernist writer Donald Barthelme. Zela has published poetry volumes “Apocalypse” (2000), “In my Hermetic Studio” and “Altar Word” (2011). His first poetry volume was awarded “The First Song” prize by the League of Albanian Writers. Other books include the short stories: “Willing deaths” (2002), novel “Dodona” (2006) essay volumes: “Letters of Darkness” (2011) and “Sigh on banality” (2009). He is translator into Albanian of William Faulkner’s novels “Light in August” and “As I Lay Dying”. Zela is currently Assistant Professor of English in Department of Liberal Arts, American University of Middle East, Kuwait City, Kuwait.