Winner of the Albanian National Silver Pen Prize in 2000 and the International Kristal Vilenica Prize in 2009, Luljeta Lleshanaku is the author of six poetry books in Albanian and three in English: Fresco: Selected Poems (New Directions, 2002), Child of Nature (New Directions, 2010), and Haywire: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), a finalist for the 2013 Popescu Prize.
Photo by Brent Pearson/Flickr
Negative Space
I
I was born on a Tuesday in April.I didn’t cry. Not because I was stunned. I wasn’t even mad.I was the lucky egg, trained for gratitudeinside the belly f…