A Love Poem to My Hometown
By Petar Penda
January 15, 2023
January 15, 2023
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The clinking of a dropped coin
on a wide stone-flagged street echoes and takes me to the town perhaps still belonging to me. Entangled with the sea but in search of the unknown, I go from place to place. Liberated once I leave I first fall in love with Russel Square and for a moment I think the city and I will last forever but the intensity of affection drives us apart. Then I flirt unabashedly with Piazza Navona, have a long affair with the Galata Tower, and am infatuated by the Carmo Convent. It takes me irrevocable years to see I don’t fit in anywhere. My escape is my despair seeking in others what we have. Now, with the march of time I want the old love back although we both know we’ve changed and don’t go together anymore. The treachery is never forgiven and by leaving you I wonder if I betray myself. |
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Petar Penda is a professor of English and American literature (University of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina), literary critic, and translator. His translations have been published in renowned journals in the USA and the UK. His poetry and flash fiction have been published in Fevers of the Mind, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Trouvaille Review, Amphora, and other journals.
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