11.25.12
Poetry: Helen Koukoutsis
At Serres train station
for Estelle We sit at a lamp-lit tavern on the edge of Serres – famous for its soccer team, Tuesday morning markets, custard-filled pastries sprinkled with cinnamon and icing sugar – made by lemon-breasted women, in headscarves, who master the basics of rolling dough at ten. An empty bottle of Tsiporo and half-eaten mezzes amplify my impending departure. An order of coffee, on its way. In ten days I'll be back in Sydney – another parting to write about. I used to wear your hand-me-downs; listen to your Led Zeppelin cassettes like I was learning a foreign language. Now you're a grandmother – another experience to dream about. Even the coffee's kaimaki (froth) opens into a black hole. Coffee is meditation here, the soul; it cannot be drunk in a hurry. So, we drink, slowly, to health – mosquitoes feast on our blood. It's 9:30pm. The last train from Thessalonica whistles into the station bringing with it travelers. |
Paris - 2010
On the river Seine, a calm liquid breeze takes in the peaks of the old cathedral. It's the last day of June. Girls, in three-quarter jeans and singlet tops, hang out with boys by the banks of the river. They wait for the night to begin – cheer, blow kisses at us as though we're kin. They do it to please us, 'cause we're tourists and crave entry into their world. Amidst the cheers, vive le France! can be heard: a young boy or girl, perhaps. I think of the countless tolls we paid to get here; the gypsies we ignored at the base of the Eiffel with their luring letters from home. I think of the graffiti we saw on the walls of unkempt buildings in the outskirts of Paris: illegible, except for the occasional fuck. I wonder how they can climb so high; why they bother. I remember today's headlines on some Parisian newspaper: Sarkozy supports burqa ban. I snap a long shot of their faces. He snaps a silhouette through the reflection of the cruise boat window: the rays of the orange sunset slice through the spires of the old cathedral. It's a city of 160 Catholic Churches. The announcement comes through the microphone. He snaps, he snaps again. Just married is graffitied on his face, on every digitised image of my face. |
About the Author:
![]() _Helen Koukoutsis lives in Sydney, Australia. Her poems have appeared online and in print at Eureka Street, Nebu[lab], Buddhist Poetry Review, Poetrix, and Studio: A Journal of Christians Writing.
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