Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

2023 Longlist Announcement

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PUBLIC GARDEN

I insist that pride is always an injustice

to us and perhaps to others. The sour taste

is in the mouth — gums are oily

from cheap lard and burnt up onion,

suppers in dark neighbourhood restaurants, with

          a foggy glass opposite you,

a glass eye that reflects and observes, when outside

the spring wind intensifies and you know

that the seeds of grapes and tomatoes are moistened

in the mouth of the woman. And if you try to light

a match her hair shines like a cascading fire that burns

her neck down to her shoulders; green caterpillars

appear in her underarms while the width of her lighted

belly creates a circular shadow on her legs.

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Blood

Most people don’t understand

whether the sun rises

from behind the mountain or

is shot out of the pistol’s barrel

it always burns you.

For this so many of our dreams

remained unrealized

inexplicably happiness was laid

in the display window

of the department store and

loneliness was again eulogized

in churches, while as the years went by

him, the one with the severed arm,

kept on other people’s discolored

walls, truth always decorates

the cement, one word written

with fiery red letters:

blood, blood, blood.

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Μαρία Πολυδούρη – Για την αυτοκτονία