translated by Patricia Felisa Barbeito

*
Some days
love is like
a scorched red sauce
Some days
love tastes like
tomato soup gone sour
One day love
got stuck
between two dirty spoons

*
In 1977 mother made
rose-leaf soup
in the state of the art stockpot of the day
Dream-soup she used to say
Tastes all the better
when simmered
in a pressure cooker
Plates all the squeaky-cleaner
when washed in an electric dish-washer
and I all the lighter and sharper
to shoot over the hanging painting
and pierce the wall with my body

*
There was a time
when father fed
a little green parrot
white seeds and coarse salt
I lived in a strange, hidden world
with hermaphroditic corals for friends
Nights, I’d climb a staircase that melted like ice-cream
Days, the room’s purple ceiling
spreading tentacles of a jellyfish
that plunged into my lunch plate
When I came of age I swallowed a frog
and a prince settled himself down on my belly
Indigestion became chronic and I abstemious
in my consumption of raw male flesh

    Νormal people with a plume and a brindled tail, Gavrielides Publications, Athens, 2014