POEM BY KATERINA ANGHELAKI ROOKE

STAGING

I feel like the stage director of my agony

leading actor in the one-act play of stress

but who’s the playwright?

Who wrote this play

with such wrongly written acts

and who’s hiding behind the curtain

who won’t see Him when he comes down?

Yet the imaginary playwright

had imagined everything

even the moment

when the lights of the soul dim

and the stage empties

now resembling a blank page

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LONG LISTED FOR THE 2023 GRIFFIN POETRY AWARDS

2023 Longlist Announcement

Precaution

     Until finally one morning you wake up and surprised

you discover you are someone else, “strange”, you think

“how can that be” but in a while you panic, you dress quickly

and run to the police station, “they want to replace me” you say,

they look at you indifferently, “at least can I have a new ID card?”

you beg,

     and later as you walk in the street and light rain starts, you

think that that’s the reason why the Lord’s birds have wings:

to cover their heads under them when they go to sleep at night.

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Morning Fog

Vaguely without any purpose blindly

without any pressure of blindness or feeling

of disengagement The immense view –

roofs and roofs TV antennas spectrums

of time and of the clouds on shut windows

the rusted drainpipes the kiosk owner

selling aspirins paper and envelopes matches

cigarettes clothespins he’s completely framed by

the hanging newspapers like a picture of

a bankrupt king when he is busy

with house chores when he hangs

a worn-out shirt he washed himself

while in the kitchen next to the small stove

he has left his big gold ring

with its beautiful stone with which he used to seal

so many foreign decrees without reading them

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