Wealth
During the summer nights, when the day turns cool
you hear the air crystals chime while you
sleep
as if your flock of sheep passes, without bleating,
and grazes in the sky, yes, your flock, you who never had
a single lamb, so certain and calm and absolute
that, when you wake up in the morning, the simplest
work you do and the most unimportant discussion
you’re forced to endure take such seriousness and
meaning of your unknown, yet, realized wealth.
Routine
Often you said we needed
to change our habits
a new beginning to commence
a new purpose to seek
help to discover hope
and its elements
while all along
you remained resting
in lush recliner
and always you upheld
your beliefs while
tightly in hand
you held
the recliner’s lever
Long-listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
Autumnal Exercise
Autumn is harsh to innocence and our adventure will
finally remain unexplained;
but when the moon rises we’re all guilty and a child
in the suburb collects the leaves as if they’re proof
of a killing or the fool smiles while he’s done with harvesting
and at night the dreamer is king; for this he has nothing
to do but to write on a window pane all day long, reading
passages of another era, since he knows that he might be
forgotten like a mother’s breast that now nurses the narrow
path
and, oh, strange windstorm, when they all have the same
thought of sheltering themselves and the crippled jumps
hastily between his crutches like a bird.
excerpt
…protocols and ways that all members adhered to, which was to slow
down and do things the way others have done them before since here
no one did things to impress the boss. Therefore, after Mike had finished
his cigarette, he decided to go to the can, although he didn’t feel
an urgent need, to give Luigi enough time to do his part of the job.
He sat on the toilet and suddenly the same image of his hero
came to his mind when he frantically searched his pocket, into which
lucky enough, he discovered the pencil he used to write down the
number of gallons that filled the occasional engine tank, to make sure
that later in the day, he didn’t enter the wrong number on the official
logs of the company. With the pencil surely in hand, he took a piece of
toilet paper and, folding it in two just so the pencil wouldn’t poke holes
in it, Mike started unfolding the image he had in his mind. He had
plenty of time, according to Luigi, who preferred things done slowly;
suddenly, the image changed, as if in a revelation, and became a new
one which he described as softly as he could so he wouldn’t pierce the
soft paper. Mike knew he had to rewrite it sometime later, yet he slowly
unfolded it on toilet paper, and when done, he folded it in two and
placed it in his pocket.
He went out only to realize that Luigi had finished his work
and was standing at the side of a bench, talking to another Italian,
Giovanni, an engineer, who was on the afternoon shift like them. One
could understand, that here in this big corporation for which Mike
worked, there were men of different backgrounds, Italians, Hellenes,
Chinese, and other nationalities, however, the Italians were just like
the Hellenes, Mike remembered that back in Athens we used to say,
una fatcha una ratsa, meaning that Hellenes and Italians were so much
alike, just like one race and they never talked about the war of 1940
when the Italians attacked Greece.
Luigi then informed Mike that it was time to go for their coffee,
so all three headed towards the small coffee room out in the yard. It was
a pleasant afternoon to the point of making Mike feel nostalgic. The
sun was passing the west horizon slowly, just like Luigi liked things
to be done, towards Stanley Park to the west of the city…
Manolis Aligizakis 