[an excerpt from Spectra]
To speak without vulnerability you claimed
impossible
the land’s fragrance its honey its plants
translation I wanted to be back in my language
“back”? /
I wanted to differently be in
another word for being
einai eimai estar
small brown moth frazzling the windowpane
another way
to live in the rind living had shed
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Your spine’s doing great the chiropractor says
that the source of the pain is a disconnection
she suspects self-protective
between heart / pelvis
“there is no communication”
between mind / ground
At my desk I swivel my hips in exaggerated circles
for three minutes
as if to undo lifetimes of this “no”
_____________________________________
Where someone spraypainted athens is the new berlin
the retort follows
BERLIN IS THE NEW ATHENS
on a billboard for instant coffee above the café
in the ardent sun
go ahead / wish for it
_____________________________________
A creek running under the building / makes the walls sweat
the weedbro next door exhales directly into my apartment
whose cheap rent is triple
what Greek friends already can’t afford
they scan the room and slam the door
of his housekeeper the American poet wrote “like a Palmyra matron /
Copied in lard and horsehair”
of everyone in language school I had the most believable accent
I can pretend-read coffee grounds
in lurching fragments
should I worry about this feeling?
blithe vacation photos in my feed
of a person who’ d emailed asking
for interesting things to do in Athens
you’re a stray dog, you don’t know where you’re from
we had the whole cove to ourselves
tourism is / to drink from one’s cut
then again it depends
where you were in the ’70s
your relationship to polyester blends
dictatorship
interminable queues
hospitality
the phrase “exhausted blue”
tar deposits on beaches
_____________________________________
Someone wheels an empty wheelbarrow
past windows where two women fold sheets
in yellowish light / the white sheets
make shapes in the window as they work
triangle rectangle square
shapes I’m hungry for
Someone walks the other way / without the wheelbarrow
the sheets in a sizeable heap
at one end of the long table
their arms pass over
I want to resist a comparison
to healers but this is how their hands move
as they open / then fold something away
as they tend to it
She takes two corners taut
and shakes it down in one crisp move
lays it on the table where it settles
in time
brings the other two corners / to the first
to make the sheet disappear
Only one person folding now
behind three large windows and a tall white fan
which is off