POEM BY ANTONIS FOSTIERIS

BOY AT THE MUSEUM

A boy has slept in the museum

for the last three thousand years

his bones have shuddered in the cold

they got full of holes for the stubbornness of the irrevocable.

A boy gets up from his bed at night

pulls the curtains aside to see the moon

the wild light startles him and he sleepwalks to the roof

just a little more and he’ll climb up to the clouds

just a little more and he’ll clean out God’s beard 

I’m lying, I’m lying a boy sleeps in the museum

eons trickle cold water on him

the eons buzz in his ears like bees

eons of ants around his mattress

just a little longer and he’ll rip the curtain of his sleep

he’ll get up and crying we’ll hug each other   

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The Wound

To simplify things he would prefer

clean counters the white smooth

finished lines of statues

to carry on with his correspondence (he

acquired enough paper and envelopes last night)

forgetting that small turtle tied

by one of its legs with a string hung from the tree

that he never dared set free though there was

no one around to see him

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SHAPE OF ABSENCE  IV

Very often, during the afternoon when everyone has left

the house, mothers let their aprons on the back of a chair

and open the closet of the dead child

as if to uncover their secret patience

as if to open the back door of silence that leads

          to a sorrowful garden.

They unhang small dresses from the hangers

light-blue, rosy, orange colour, made

of the thoughtful hours of twilight. They dust them

and caress them absentmindedly and suddenly

they smile, their girls must have grown tall by now and

they should buy them new dresses. The brush

is left on the floor like a small craft that

travels in a small seashore with its lights turned off.

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LONG LISTED FOR THE 2023 GRIFFIN POETRY AWARDS

2023 Longlist Announcement

Similarities

Rain is a tough game that only the one who lost

           can win

lovers also vanish among the other passersby and

the stones children throw in the night again

           fall in futility;

nevertheless I was a hero too, since I often stood

           dumbfounded or I stood aside

as if to live once again in one word: everything

seemed suspicious like the silent cypresses and

the clocks must feel cold but who can think of that

like auntie Rosa, the spinster, who aged on the stairway

with her sealed vulva like a Sunday holiday while

            the bells called the Christians;

when finally someone knocked at the door, three

thousand years had already passed, auntie Rosa had

died at three in the morning however the birds were

asleep we never found which coffin factory was open

           during the night;

I stood hesitantly like a crazy man who bought all

           the music

or like those poor women who always hold a laughable

           umbrella

so they wouldn’t hear the direct insult

almost like a poem is written.

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Stories

Yes, I couldn’t deny

my promise to mention

my first cousin Antony

best dancer of western Crete

and narrate his sweet story

impossible not to include it

in my recollections

like the beautiful breasts

of the girl I touched

behind the movie theater

in that side street where

we frequented when the bright

lights could reveal

our secret thoughts and

like my distant cousin, who once

jumped from one edge of a ravine

to the other just to defy Death

yes, between the two edges

three meters apart where

just thirty meters lower

Hades’ gaping mouth lurked,

I too dared touch the breast

of the fourteen year old girl  

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POEM BY KATERINA GOGOU

TROY AVENUE 35A

My house, just like yours

intrudes into the houses of others

since the roads are so narrow

and there are so many people

sometimes I feel we sleep in the same bed

since we are almost glued together

we use the same brush to brush our teeth

and we eat the same food

only when you go

you leave behind your dirty dishes

it can’t be explained otherwise

that the sink is always full

it doesn’t matter though

I do what I can

to show how much I love you

for this I put on the fake moustache

and I go out to the rain with a fan

that your children will laugh

only I beg of you don’t gossip about us

and leave my Myrto alone

she was born the way she looks.

Sad.

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