And gypsies came who built
their lives like their houses
86
founded on horse carriages
rolling along and pulled by cows that
have something of the elephants
and of the travelling ships and
as they groan and echo passing
over rough paths and streets
when suddenly houses stop
with the panting gypsies close
behind they resemble as
something holy and great
like Epitaphios or the Holy Arc.
Here are the Turkish gypsies
who sleep in tents, the pure
race. They always travel in
plains and in deserts the ones
with their invincible souls
their straight and erect bodies
and the wildness of their souls
shines in their lighted eyes
the soft and the powerful as
if made of steel and sting;
they’re joyous in the snow
and in the rain, in the sunshine
they celebrate the best festival
on bare earth as Hades finds
the man naked and chokes him
to death in the ripped tent whipped
by the wind that charges and
wilts men as if they’re flowers.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3LP7NW6

Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

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

An old woman crosses herself: Lord of all Powers;
of the Western Powers of course
A street sweeper shivers in the cold
his teeth rattle
playing a subterranean angry song
hey, bosses
who yelled?
No one
it blows
Workers in the produce market, laborers using
chainsaws, workers unloading fertilizers,
longshoremen, laundress, quarry workers
the crowd of workers carrying the flour sacks,
eighty kilos each,
old women cleaning the public washrooms
with their eyes swollen and red from the ammonia
the wind howls in side streets, squares
train stations, electric wires, bells,
the upcoming years howl
Two workers talk in a low tone voice
you can’t hear what they say
you only see their lips moving like hands
ready to strike
A shining car stops
two bald-headed men and a woman with a big ass
disembark
the nation demands sacrifices
the banks spread over the wide sidewalks
like prehistoric beasts that digest their prey

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

Neutral
Neutral colour of the page
before the words
inviolable void
uncommitted absence
plan for a dream
unrealized
before your hand
takes the pencil and
draws emptiness
on the whitewash page
like the immaculate skin
of a conflagrated woman
you touch
painting of a mountain peak
adorned by snow
and you say,
before I write a single word
the poem sings eloquently

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763750