The Daughters of the Moon

                                                                        to Stella, Brunilda, and all the women

                                                                        who came from Albania across the sea

Moon, mangled moon,

Cruel eye of ancient tales

                        Your daughters,

Howling at hazy crossroads

In the chill of the wounded night

remembering…

Lured to the maze of a conch

Their dresses’ white petals stripped

They follow the road to the sea

There, the sun’s splinters

Dug a scar on the sea’s skin

Festered boil,

Aboard, the wind subdues

The last familial vestiges

Smuggled in the jumbled bags.

Left behind

The tortured soil refuses

to yield its dew

Puddle of tears.

Treacherous Hesperia!

Where the clouds love to swim

Naked in the sunset mess

and waiting….

In a lost pond,

A pall of leaves

Guards the furtive shudder

of blanched nights

And longed for rendezvous

Here, in the half-dismantled abatoir,

The night denies her mantle

And behind maimed walls

The moon’s milk is sullied

in the hyacinth veins

Of  her daughters

hanging…