SHAPE OF ABSENCE    XIII

The night, a motionless stony darkness,

shuts its eyes and mouth. Its hand can’t

extend, its leg can’t move; everything

is built of thick darkness. Only the small

marble cross with your small name

shines in the night, white trunk of a fell tree,

and the white juice of memory that rises inside it

makes its tender branches stir,

along with the letters of your name.

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POEM BY SOPHIA KOLOTOUROS

SPIDER-WOMAN

I travelled in enclosed hearts

strange rough bodies

male bodies with erected phalluses

male bodies unexplored continents

I traveled in these bodies

I enjoyed their flowing juices

I wondered if they knew

how to touch a woman

if they wanted to conquer a woman.

Like we conquer them touching

edges of their chord-emotions entering,

piercing through, suckling, and turning them dry

we drip our own poison.

We conquer our victims.

Who has seen us as victims?

Who conquered us?

In the war of genders they see us as trophies.

They place their flags in our bodies

and leave in a delirious state.

The new century returns to Matriarchy

and I already set my web

for unsuspecting males

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Toward Dawn

Late at night that the traffic slows down

and the traffic wardens leave their posts he

doesn’t know what to do anymore from his window

he looks down at the big glass of the cafe front steamed up

by the breathing of sleeplessness he looks at the

spectral refracted waiters changing clothes behind the cash

he looks at the sky with its wide white holes

discerning in them the wheels of the last bus And then

that: “nothing else nothing else” He enters

the totally empty room He leans his forehead

on the shoulder of a statue resembling him (unnaturally taller)

feeling the freshness of morning on the marble while

down in the courtyard with the broken flagstones the guards

gather and cut strings off packages of the exiled people

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Mr Stratis Thalassinos Describes a Man     III Ephebe

On my sixteenth year in the summer a foreign voice sang in my ears;

it was, I remember, by the sea shore among the red nets

and a boat abandoned on the sand, a skeleton

I tried to go near that voice by putting

my ear on the sand the voice disappeared

but there was a shooting star

as though I saw a shooting star for the first time

and on my lips the salinity of the waves.

From that night the roots of trees never came to me.

The next day a voyage opened in my mind

and closed again like a book of pictures;

I thought of going down to the shore every evening

first to learn of the shore and then to go on a trip;

the third day I fell in love with a girl on a hill;

she had a little white house like a lone chapel

an old mother at the window and glasses always

lowered on her knitting, always silent

a pot of basil a pot of carnations

I think her name was Vasso Frosso or Billio;

so I forgot the sea.

One Monday in October

I found a broken water pitcher before the little white house

Vasso (for short) appeared in a black dress,

her hair uncombed and her eyes red

when I asked her:

‘She died, the doctor said she died because

we didn’t slaughter a black cock when we started

the foundations…where can one find a black cock

around here…there are only white flocks…and

in the market they sell chicken already plucked.’

I never imagined sorrow and death being like that

I left and returned to the sea.

That night on the deck of “St Nicolas”

I had a dream of a very old olive tree crying.

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Expectation

Yes, it was all in vain, we knew it and all the news

we received described the abominable horrors in detail:

deeds of friends, acts of foes, merely insignificant and

we paid attention to the song of the chickadee and

to the meadow’s fecund verdure still able to sing amid

the colorful destruction of our childhood as we gazed at

the decapitated houses as if they were gleaming

stars.

Then, we too, threw away our credit cards and free

from unpaid guilt we walked anew yet as desolate

as the earth we were meant to traverse.

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LONG LISTED FOR THE 2023 GRIFFIN POETRY AWARDS

2023 Longlist Announcement

White Nights

      Since then I’ve accepted life without any complaints

like when I’m dreaming; then the executioner comes,

the so called owner and wants to be paid, “with what

money, you miserable man, since I have so many beautiful

ideas to support” I say to him and later, in the street,

it was a beautiful winter night, lots of stars, tears came

to my eyes. I took off my shoes, wrapped them in my jacket

and threw them down the bridge, “don’t tyrannize me anymore,

Anastasia Phillipovna”, I said to her, “it is late, you got

to go back home”

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