Long-listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
a barren woman who cries by the door, sniffing in
her snot,
just to hear a child, until a small tiny star takes my
last argument away
that the world isn’t nice at all.
When I finally decided to start it was already late.
All Homeric adventures were sang many years ago
only a few flashlights with their yellow light were left
and the nostalgia of a world beyond this world. I
of course tried to familiarize myself plucking poultry
or sitting on the toilet with the rats where I used to die
a little at a time
an impossible thing since each time they rang the bell
I always appeared in front of them, a corpse full
of life;
then I took after the fly and its daily chores or someone
who killed and after he went to eat at the restaurant,
having a letter in his pocket, the letter with the divine
confession that no one ever received.
Another time I’ll narrate to you about the witness who
was very thirsty in the desert, they say, until he died
in order to write his name in the water.
Manolis Aligizakis 