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the kiss prince charming gave
princess wild
fold your heroes in pages
wrinkled and part ripped
packaged kilo of red mullets
secretly they rise your heroes
moistened by fish gills and scales
they ascend declaring to the kitchen
and to olive oil smoking in the pan
their innocence of youth
erased dreams and ambitions
ROMIOSINI
…Come you oh woman who broods on the golden
eggs of thunderbolts –
when an azure day comes you’ll take off the headscarf
and again take up arms
that May’s hailstorm will beat your forehead
that the sun will break a pomegranate in your cotton apron
that alone you will divide seed by seed
among your twelve orphans
that the shore will shine around you like the edge of a sword
and April’s snow
so that the crab will come out from the rocks to sunbathe
and cross its claws…
Imperishability
Words we never said, words with
the distant echo of the night, futile words
flowing emotions that followed
the body’s shape, passing women,
unfulfilled desires with no reciprocation,
perhaps with no desire to exist.
Many dead shells, petrified,
that slowly cover the tongue,
bronchus, lungs, the underwater
parts of this abandoned ship.
excerpt
FROZEN SALMON
…worst of all had occurred when a passenger couldn’t hold his or her
bowel and the cab would turn into a crapping space, which would
take two good hours of disinfecting and cleaning before one would
be allowed to take another fare. It happened to Costa once, when he not
only lost most of his shift, but he also had to do the cleaning, to boot.
The driver’s thoughts kept him busy as he travelled over the Granville
Street Bridge, and upon reaching Broadway, he turned to the right,
and after two miles of distance, he turned left on Blenheim Street, which
would take them to the reservation. He noticed that his customers were
half-asleep; yet the stench of their breathing forced him to open his
window to get some fresh air. Night had fallen when they arrived at the
Indian reservation community, although towards the west, there were
some bright gleams of the sunset that no one paid attention to. Such
romantic images weren’t important since his customers struggled as
they searched their pockets for the money to pay the fare.
“Where is your money?” the white man asked the Indian, who
pretended he didn’t follow his buddy’s question, and he started getting
out of the car.
“Where are you going?” the driver asked angrily, “Who’s paying
the fare? Eleven sixty…” he indicated to them, pointing at the meter.
They stared at each other. No word was spoken. No fart or any
other foul smell was detected. Then, the Indian showed his middle
finger, as if to say, you know what a man means when he raises his
middle finger to someone and now Costa was angry since the fare
turned into something dramatic. Nonetheless, he had not the slightest
inclination to forego his fare for these two assholes. Costa grabbed
the white man by the sleeve and yelled,
“Eleven dollars and sixty cents, or I call the cops.”
They both started searching their pockets again. No money was
found.
“I don’t have a dime…” the Indian said.
“I don’t…” the white guy said, “you knew I had nothing left, I
bought the last round, don’t you remember?” he said in a questioning
way, then he suggested, “Ask your wife for a twenty-dollar bill.”
excerpt
involuntary emotion spreading over the citizens of Kamloops
and their houses complimenting the golden hues left by the westerly
walking sunlight. In such serene moments one could almost
feel that things could slowly fall back in their normal places and
all animosities would subside to become benevolence as the balance
of the universe might again find its place among people and
the darkness brought about by the egos of the few could slowly
dissipate so life could return to normal even in the lives of savages
and beasts.
Mary looked flushed and excited as she met Anton. She
fell in his arms and her eyes searched in his as if to find a response
to her sudden entrance, a positive nod for her loving greeting
and Anton noticed her wish in her beautiful smiling eyes and he
responded in a pleasing way.
“How are you?” she asked him “why you came back?”
“I had a little time before supper and thought of passing by
and perhaps meet you…I’m going to meet a newspaper reporter
later on and I plan to give him some detail out of Dylan’s diary…
the Kamloops Daily News has a piece about the death of Father
Thomas.”
Her mind went to what happened that night and also to
the missing siblings and was ready to remind Anton her earlier
question about their whereabouts when Anton opened up to give
her what he knew.
“I took them to the Indian Reserve on Paul Lake Road,
left them with the chief of the Band.”
“How, where you found them?” her voice showed her anxiety
about the wellbeing of the two siblings and how Anton took
them to the Reserve.
He explained to her that George had brought them to him,
that they had found George at his place and the rest of the story.
Archer of the Unfeasible
I’m very late
my past is an ancient enigma
one thousand-year-old man
in eternal youth
who has sailed
since eons
shattering the events
into silence
horizon
the myth of time
in the history of lost
opportunities
I’m very late
hung between my meaning
and the flashes of fate
I lie where the season brought me
spender of the unfeasible
confessor of the opposite shore instincts
without what I wanted
a soul to love
where the light narrates
the tree reminiscent
in the chaos
Tonight, we decided to write a letter for you, mother.
Perhaps we may hear the rain
dripping on your worn-out clogs.
Perhaps we may see your smile
hanging from your chin over our thirst.
They feed us rotten potatoes: don’t worry.
They curse us and hit us: please love us.
Perhaps we may never return—but you still light
the lamp, mother; others will return.
Now you gather the white cloths of exile from
the clothesline.
You stitch the patch of your concern on our socks.
You know, mother, we never used the gloves
you knitted for us
we gave them to a comrade who was taken away
to be court-martialled;
we also gave him a can of food and a piece of
our palm.
He tied the edge of his sack with a string
he tossed the sack on his shoulder
and we saw him climb the hill
with his thin legs scissoring the opposite
sky into pieces.
Each morning, they take a count of us.
Each evening, we count the leftover plates
the leftover grief in our eyes
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Echo
She opened her window
motionless powerful feminine
exhilarating gesture
that shook me
and memory rekindled
paradisiacal kisses
I dreamed of capturing
the echo of a raindrop
falling through fog
into the plaza fountain
greetings, oh life,
here I am too:
splash!
Long-listed for the 2023 Griffin poetry Awards
IV
There was a vacant seat in the open-air theatre where
we had gathered;
the city was in danger, we had no time, we had to decide
quickly
“Who are we waiting for?” one asked the other, showing
the vacant seat;
the day passed noisily, with angry exchanges, voting
and every so often “who are we waiting for?” they asked,
until, suddenly, a leaf fell off a tree
and after it made a circle in the air, over the human noise,
it came and landed on the vacant seat.
Perhaps it meant something more important.
excerpt
Bruce Davidson assessed the spectacle and said, “You’re an agent’s
dream. Usually we have to concoct all this crap and get the artist to go
along with it. But here – man, it’s hard to keep up with you. It’s never going
to be boring.”
“No,” Ken said. “It’s never going to be boring.”
When the fuss died down he had the boulder removed and put the ten
thousand dollars back into his bank account. Summer turned to early fall
and Nick’s symphony for Isumataq neared completion. The rock CD had
been recorded. But they still had no site for the unveiling and the more
they discussed it the more they came back to the idea of Parliament as the
venue. But how do we get our foot in the door there? Bruce asked. Ken
scheduled a breakfast meeting with the Honourable John Fraser, Speaker
of the House and they met a few days later. Over bacon and eggs, Ken laid
out his ideas for the unveiling of Isumataq.
“I know it’s not done,” he said. “People don’t take over the Houses of
Parliament for exhibitions or art openings.”
“Well,” John said. “Let me think about it. I think it’s a wonderful idea.
We’ll have to get approval from all the parties, because you have to have
everyone on board when you do something like this. If you’re going to
do something that hasn’t been done before you don’t want to just shove
it down somebody’s throat. You want to get everybody on side, so the
story has to be told very well. I know your story and it’s wonderful. You’re
the one who should come and tell it, but then there are the logistics of
getting all those people together. And then, depending on the particular
day, they may be angry with each other – it gets so complicated. Let’s just
work away at it.”
The winter of 1990 settled in, and Ken received a call for help from
Keith. As president of the Arctic Tourist Association, he was scheduled to
make a presentation in a downtown Toronto convention centre to Tom
Hawking, the Federal Minister of Arctic Affairs. The snag was that as he
was driving his caterpillar over the ice to his island airstrip, the machine
had crashed through and he had to get it out before it leaked diesel fuel
into the river. Would Ken make the speech in his place, and would he
present the Minister with one of his paintings?
The comedian Dave Thomas emceed the event. Ken was the last to
speak and he talked about the importance of tourism to the Arctic and
how important it was to allow those who lived there to make the decisions
about the infrastructure – let them build it in their own way. Let
Nunavut be their land and a land of their ideas.
Hawking requested a private talk and they met for a drink the next
day. He asked to hear his story – the long version – all the details of his
travels through the Arctic and the road that had led to the creation of
Isumataq.
Manolis Aligizakis 