My own friends are blackbirds
who play see-saw on roofs of crumbling houses
Exarchia, Patisia, Metaxurgio, Metz.*
They do whatever comes along.
Peddlers of cookbooks and encyclopedias
they build roads and connect deserts
barkers for Zinonos Str. dives
professional rebels
cornered in the old days and forced to
drop their pants
now they swallow pills and alcohol to sleep
but they have dreams so they don’t sleep.
My own women-friends are taut wires
on roof terraces of old houses
Exarchia, Victoria, Koukaki, Ghizi.
You’ve pinned on them a million steel clothes’ pins
your guilt, party-meeting decisions, borrowed dresses
cigarette burn-marks, strange headaches
threatening silences, vaginitis
they fall in love with gays
trichomonas, late-periods
the telephone the telephone the telephone
broken glasses and no one for an ambulance.
They do whatever comes along.
– 3, Katerina Gogoi, from Now Let’s See What You’re Going to Do: Poems 1978-2002
