Roaming

As if blind, we roamed the land for endless days and long nights

we seek a sign for our meaningful penitence. We commenced

The new Exodus under the loneliness of the lit sky, absent

ancient lights, for years we followed blind men or the half

blind, those others who thought they knew it all. The blistering

heat ravaged our limbs and pasted upon our cracked lips its

fatigued emotional touch as our leader’s staff bent with sadness

upon seeing our desperation. We opened a new page, battle

of man against animal-man, women against goddesses,

virginity sacrificed in the first night of lust, we wrote short

pages and meaningful stigmata in our history, exclamation

points at the sight of the bird’s flight, full stop at the watering

hole where our bodies shed their salt and our cracked lips

regained their elasticity.

And this was our second month of pregnancy and this litany

was our second miracle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGFRGLVH

Η Τσαγιέρα του Ράσελ, η αρχή της διαψευσιμότητας και ο Επίκουρος

Μυρσίνη Γκανά – Εγώ θα σε περιμένω

Zahra Pourazizi, Τρία ποιήματα

October
autumn offers its benches
under the rusty foliage dropping
the quivering dirt gets stuck to your
foot you may hear its rustling spinning later on when
underneath the crows’ wings
light conceals
and the bizarre sneak of the rats
among chess pieces that
look black from one end to the other
the letters on the page fall
it squeaks underneath one’s soles
from somewhere to something
lonely girl wanders
at night
October
under the darkness of cold quilts
I cover myself

Excerpt

We shall straddle over the Alps,

the current of the Rhone we

shall surprise, we shall colour

the darkness of the north

with white, we shall charge

the mind of April and May

we shall sow a new Hellas

and a new youth in every

land we shall grow roots

and wherever we find

darkness we shall spread

new planets shining in

our splendorous light,

ascetics will befriend

life again and you will

again drink the milk of joy,

oh fasting man, a glass

of wine will make you drunk.

The Celts and Goths and

Germans and all barbarians

will rejoice in our company

and first of all the Italian

cassock covered priests and pontiffs

will bow before the feet

of Helen and they will

revere the swan of Eurotas.

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

Jeltje Fanoy, Migration (1960s) / Μετανάστευση

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