Days Of April `43

Trumpets, trams, deep echoes, screeching brakes

chloroform his mind as you count

as you endure and then you vanish

in the numbness and the mercy of a surgeon

He walks carefully in the streets, so that he won’t slip

on melon rinds that the careless Arabs throw

or the refugee-politicos and the gang

laying in watch will he step on it? Will he not?

Like when you pluck a daisy he walks on

swinging a huge bunch of useless keys the dry light-blue remembers

faded advertisements of the Greek Coastal Navigation

windows locked shut over beloved faces

or the little clear water at the roots of a plane tree

He walks going to his work as

a thousand hungry dogs rip his pants

and strip him naked

He walks, staggering, pointed at by fingers

and a dense wind brings around

garbage, dung, stench, and curses

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Dorothy Parker, Nocturne / Νυχτερινό

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

Αντωνία Παυλάκου, Όρια και ρήξεις, 24 γράμματα, 2023

Τα αμερικανικά σχέδια: Α και Β – Περί «αερο-πλάνων»

Οδός Πατησίων, δεύτερο μισό του 19ου αι., όπως την περιγράφει στην «Παληά Αθήνα» ο Γρηγόριος Ξενόπουλος

Encounter

Nothing of course comes on its own

You have to search so you may find it In the mornings

the sun enters from the eastern window it discolors

the two purple chairs it stays a while retreats

leaving behind an impression of gentleness – that

serene extinguishing

And the carpet flowers

stepped on from before are right they have

their ears glued to the floor they listen

to the rhythmic galloping of underworld horses Then

the silent woman enters and you see it

that she tries not to step on those flowers

Perhaps two together can endure the inconceivable

although it always appears to just one

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