CHALLENGE
The trawler reached the shore loaded with words. Allusive words
floundering ambiguity. All of them in shimmering shades to remind us of
the depths of poems. The fisherman smiled as he hopped ashore with
labyrinthine eyes, bare feet, his toes tracing denotations as they deftly
fondled the nets of meaning. He picked words one by one and, having
pulled out the panting gills and cast the red entrails overboard, he scraped
off the shimmer of sensation, sank them in salt, rinsed them in water and
arranged them, scaled and unrecognisable, in a basket of notions.
Then he turned to me and showed me their bodies, their sagging heads.
Without vision, words are not amphibian, he said, and goading me with
traces of irony, he commented: let’s see what sort of fish you can catch.
Let’s see if you can –without an ocean– make of these words a poem that floats.
CLIMB
The cypress bends, always bends. It splits the stonewall, drawing cracks on
the stone, applying daily pressure –with the help of the dead– to bring it
down. The roots are climbing up. They won’t stay underground. They cross
the darkness, soak up the aquifer, toss up the soil, kick up the slabs.
Those who lie in the shadow of the cypress never rest. They’re climbing endlessly,
stretching the tips of their fingers, rising on the tip of their toes till they
reach the light. Today I tripped on the knots of their sprawling hair that was
tangled wilfully in the roots.
CHRONICLE
Her hands flutter as they prepare breakfast in the kitchen, just before she
wakes the children touching their lids with her lashes. Then, unwavering,
she insulates the door cracks, wearing words on her skin, feeling the i blades
sink in her chest and the o curves tighten round her throat, with a tongue
that traces our faults in its startling cracks.
The room fills with daffodils bespeaking of neglect; one for each threat
while time the lioness turns on the gas and sticks her head in the oven,
lifting a paw to cross myriads of miles in a single moment.
Red Line, Agra Publications, 2023
Translation: Memi Katsoni
CIRCLE
I want to give you a circle
To step on its circumference
and simultaneously look at
the world inside and outside
If you long for fire make of the circle a sun
If you choose solitude call it a moon
If you want to send a message use it as a sphere
If it is lust you feel take it in your teeth like a nipple
If you should choose demise, tie it around your neck
GALLOWS
And we started drawing
ourselves in the gallows
For every wrong letter a limp
Every word a hanged man
It is how we learned to spell
poetry
NIGHT
It is daybreak
yet the hand is driven by night
A blind root
the depths which define me
Some dark blues entwined in the blackness
stumble around my tongue
The eyes: shutters that lock the sun
Outside the window
the light
shows me what I am not
CONFRONTATION
Lying down on the shore for the lovemaking
do the lovers know
the history of the sand?
The sea receives in her gulf bay the rock
until the spasm of lust and anoints it
When desire is sated
when love’s passion is gone
she feels the rock’s roughness
and beats at it rabidly to pulverize it
till she spews it out in tiny bits on the coastline
CARPENTRY
No rest
for the soul in my daily body
Its limbs protruded
from the stretching rack
set up in the basement at home
where the family’s
accoutrements were kept
of blood’s culpability
Nails
for our pain to cut deep
when relationships snapped in two
and we hammered them back
with the bolts of obligation
Glue
to sustain the weight of the unforeseen
which was your due to bear
Presses
for the levelling of incongruities
so the gap wasn’t visible to the naked eye
With the help of my near and dear
I sawed back the wings
so they fit in the ephemeral
no longer to have to listen to how disturbing
the sound was of my rising up
every time I looked for sky
in a cradle of light
constructed with darkness
PLAYING JACKS
Death is playing outside our door
He flips his hand
tosses his palm
and feeds those who fall to the earth
I once slipped through his fingers
and love opened a parachute before I hit the ground
GARDEN
I’m balancing on thin legs
my tail colourful
my beak made of granite
I watch myself through the pane
alternately looking at my other form
and again bending over the desk
So I’m a bird and didn’t know it
So I have a chance of flying
But as I lean my beak down to the ground
I’m caught in its claws
In the claws of the cat that I am
JOURNEY
The ship sailed off the painting
crossed the room
dropped anchor by the bed
sank into my dream
from where surfaces timidly
a poem bubble
SELF-PORTRAIT
The halo was too big for her
and it slipped into a noose around her neck
Her hand feverishly painted
while she dipped her gaze in the mirror
then with a jerky move
she kicked the stool from under her
and was left in mid-air
PRESCRIPTION
The patient will survive don’ t worry
We won’t lose him for now he’s holding fast
Only for vision to focus more sharply
squeeze every day at dawn
a few drops of lemon in the pupils
to help the gaze grow familiar with pain
SIBERIA
I swim inside her womb
listening to the blood
eavesdropping on the heartbeat
A leaf greening from the root
Thus I met her, but
once torn away from her body
she was no longer nestling ground
Mother? I ask, she makes no answer
She tidies up the snow inside the house
and smiles at me
CYCLING
The bicycle shone in the sun
Just a small ride! I said
I can’t balance properly
but I dare take a fall to learn
If it is all I’ve ever learned
Desire every time
catches me unawares
as the saddle the pedals the wheel
get strewn in all directions
only the front light
stays on course
FAIRGROUND
They told us: there is music here lights
Won’t you come in
But before we had our fill of play
the Ferris Wheel got stuck high up
and we had to leap into the void
to effect a landing
Do you feel the rings around your neck?
The target in the shooting gallery
is a forest of human hands
The carousel has grown dim
Its horses hungry
The train tears reason asunder
inside the ghost tunnel
Once out into the light
again we will forget
If you survive this madness
you see the meaning of distortion
by looking at yourself in the mirrors
As an alternative
there's a free ride on offer
on the Wall of Death
Just a Ride, Agra Publications, 2016
Translation: Konstantinos Matsoukas
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