After the Effort

The horrified face was almost covered. Dishevelled hair, ripped

shirt, bruised flesh. They gave him back the leather belt,

the wristwatch, and the black comb left on the long table. He

took them. He didn’t know what to put on first, his watch,

his belt? Where would he place his comb? He looked at

his ID papers, “Lucas” it said. “Lucas,” he said to himself.

he didn’t raise his eyes; he put on the watch with slow haste

(The table was the reason, such empty, and dark as it was

and with a scratched corner), he put his belt on and tied it.

He was still tightening it when he walked to the hallway; the

old bathrooms stunk, the pipes dripped, the boy at the cafe

was collecting the bottles and the guards were talking

through the skylight. “Lucas, Lucas” he repeated as if

talking to a foreigner, in a foreign language. The evening

had arrived. The streetlights and the lights of the Museum

           were just turned on. 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763726

Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

https://griffinpoetryprize.com/press/2023-longlist-announcement/

Last Command

     Each night, a lament was coming from the empty

glasses of the alcoholics, dirty desires, harassed me

in the laundry room however, a shadow of a spider

was enough to open heavenly melodies on the wall;

I stood by the stairs, I ran to order their coffees,

for this, they never looked at the sky to see me

sitting to His right; only the old woman put incense

in the censer and climbing on the smoke, she slept

with me.

      It was a star-filled night, and children waited

for words from the animals while I, in the middle

of the fields, so sad that a flock of birds could fly

through my body, taking all the coal dust of

the deserted stations with the forgotten people,

went out to the marketplace and had nothing

else to sell, I sold my confessions for the blessing

of my future days. 

      When I finally sat to rest, it was very late,

the wind brought bells, the day returned, and

I was expelled, I who one night in the fields

grew breasts to feed an old beggar who was

begging for his mother in his last moments.

      That night, I emptied so much that when

they threw the knife at me it didn’t have

any flesh to pierce.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763564

Οι αυτοκρατορίες πέφτουν από μέσα – Gli imperi cadono dall’interno

Νίκος-Αλέξης Ασλάνογλου, Υστεροφημία