Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

2023 Longlist Announcement

Childhood Memory

During the summer siesta when the adults sleep, a bucket

of water tumbles down the stairway onto the hallway tiles.

At that moment, and under the hallway, at the same spot

where the bucket emptied, a fresh, forgotten for years,

storage room appears. Birds with their violins roost in there,

the linen kerchiefs, starched napkins of old tidiness,

two broken chairs, a basket of grapes, a pair of red

sandals, a high glass, the chalk, the school bell, the young

woodworker who saws the big stairway of the cicada.

Soon a light breeze starts blowing from in there wrinkling

part of the sea and the forehead of poetry with that

neglected, funny, childish frowning.   

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Teaching

And Themis was put in a dark dungeon

while I faced my kin’s delirious eyes

yet, though I had much to say,

I kept silent, momentarily, to give

time to their simple-mindedness 

bubbling along with the creek’s murmur

innocent smile of child upon which

I entrusted my hope to rediscover justice

with spring flowers rejuvenating

the veins of impeccable Eros

my distraught friends remained imprisoned

and I, dressed in rags, walked over the lands,

and being soft-spoken and with new symbols

with new follies and  new anecdotes,

I tried to revert the beliefs of

new Judases born with sharpened teeth

ready to devour each other

nothing to leave for the winds

the rightful inheritors of my teachings

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SHAPE OF ABSENCE  XXV

The distance lengthened between hands. People in love

don’t join hands anymore, not to reveal their lonely frost,

               afraid that

the cry of absence might be heard from their joined hands.

               They remain like that

as if in a dark tunnel gazing the opposite time

or the distant, vacant tables

that have changed shape and place to a solid silence.

               Only

the alarm clock on the night table,

like the eye of an adult that has grown before its time,

shows a familiar time, unapproachable, already outdated;

and slowly-slowly death withers

like a unused forgiveness. 

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POEM BY IOULITA ILIOPOULOS

CITY OF MUSIC

Small, multicolored musical squares

cobblestoned, where you step and

new sounds break up in the air

one night wearing a petticoat

and with a green dome on its hair

the night that turned into dawn

a band of light you passed over me

and closing my eyes as if feathers

a yellow night that turns into salinity

the river drop by drop

persistently persistent little lights like kisses

in her tiny hands as if of a marionette

a crypt, a fan, a voice

climbing slowly up in the air

and the elongated verdure on the ground

caresses as if silence, in a huge café where

the sounds go around in circles.

Trays with small glasses and sweets, gold signs

—which truth do the clocks count? —

music, you say.

A pink hydrangea and through the open window

a big heater made of porcelain and in very small letters

Salzburg of the nineteen hundred forever

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Scarecrow

He knew our peculiar desire for suffering, He knew

we preferred the sighs of defeated and those left

by the birds in their morning flight, though our soft

eardrums were unable to capture the thunderbolt’s

rapture, we still wanted to lie next to the woman’s

breast, close enough to feel her pain, close enough

to taste salinity of her skin and He, alone, encompassed

the earth seen by our irises His primal goal to transcend

our desires once and for all, while we still kneeled

before the scarecrow, jet-black eyes and straw hair

on his head that moved from side to side, myths upon

which we had based our existence.

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WAR CALENDAR

13^th DAY or ON LAND NOW

The air fights descend to the ground

and death returns to earth

the place of its origin.

Bright flashes accompanied him

the only luxury left to the corpses.

Truly, how evil has changed direction!

The actions of death commenced down

in the mud, in the hooves of the animals

the boots, the bog, then he climbed

to the black clouds and into the innocent souls.

And now in the desert

as I imagine it with innumerable

rosy sandy breasts

that breath as they near death

secretive body

with the dark oasis hidden here and there

uncommitted, like spectator of perdition

that became a parachutist to conquered her.

Now from top to bottom

the progress of bloody flesh;

the sky, the fiery past

will be forgotten

and good will be established on earth

it will be buried deep, very deep in memory.

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Mathios Paskalis Among the Roses

I’ve been smoking steadily since morning

if I stop the roses will embrace me

with thorns and fallen petals they will choke me

they grow crookedly, all of them with the same rose color

they stare; they wait to see someone; no one goes by

behind the smoke of my pipe I watch them

being scentless over a weary stem

in the other life a woman told me ‘you can touch this hand

and this rose is yours it’s yours you can take it

now or later, whenever you like’

I walk down the steps smoking still,

the roses walk down with me, excitedly

and in their manner they have something of the voice

at the root of a scream, there where the man

starts shouting ‘mother’ or ‘help’

or the small white words of love.

It’s a small garden full of roses

a few square meters descending with me

as I go down the steps, without sky;

and her aunt would tell her ‘Antigone you forgot your exercises today

at your age I never wore a corset, not in my time’.

Her aunt was of pitiful stature with veins in relief

many wrinkles around her ears an almost dead nose

but her words were always full of wisdom.

I saw her one day touching Antigone’s breast

like a small child stealing an apple.

Perhaps I’ll meet that woman now as I walk down?

When I left she said to me ‘who knows when we’ll meet again’

and then I read about her death in old newspapers

about Antigone’s marriage and Antigone’s daughter’s marriage

the steps down and my smoking without end

that leaves on my lips the taste of a haunted ship

with a mermaid crucified to the wheel while she was still beautiful.

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