Nahant: Poetry by the Sea

ROZI THEOHARI

ROZI THEOHARI came from Albania to America in 1994. In her homeland, she received two university degrees and published several books. In 2000, after mastering English, she received an Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts from North Shore Community College in Lynn, MA. In 2000, she published Two Halves, a collection of poems in English. In 2001, she published a long poem in English and Albanian based on the traditional Albanian legend of “Rozafat,” and in 2004 and 2005, she published a novel and a collection of stories. Rozi Theohari was one of seven international writers awarded the Naji Naaman Literary Prize in 2006. Her poem, “The Nahant Island,” shows her poetic experience of the island as seen from her apartment in Lynn, located near the beginning of the causeway to Nahant. It is included in Do Leave Out My Right Hand - I Am Still Alive! (Swampscott MA: Mgraphics 2010), an omnibus of poems written since 1994.

THE NAHANT ISLAND

Day time
Nahant makes the sun envious
Exposing her unbuttoned breast.
As night falls, the sky
Embellishes her – painting lips and cheeks
With sunset’s purple beams.
All night long
She hides her face
Kissing the ocean.

from: Two Halves (Tirana, Albania: Mesonjetorjae Pare) 2002.
courtesy: Rozi Theohari