Four Poems Christina Strigas
Let the Clouds Speak
Love can be so cruel to eight-year-old girls
who remember every cut their parents sliced.
Funeral cake with bloody confetti;
unintentional, conditional
paraphrased love.
To be balanced on one foot,
until we all fall over.
In forty years,
So much can affect you
The moon is full tonight.
Let the clouds speak why they feel hidden
under such a magnificent moon.
What can they say to each other,
in a language of lovers
only we comprehend?
Your death has letters of your name
you would not imagine,
how your syllables inhabit my soul.
You can never read my poems with a
magnifying glass or a broken telescope.
Your name is my password
Four hidden letters
of earth.
I was eight and now I’m not.
Parents make you almost human.
Going Under
Keep me alive with blood transfusions
from heaven,
filled with harmony and honest words.
from the surface
I emerge an exhausted sea,
swimming in Aphrodite wisdom
like a quarrel between our mythologies,
as Greek Gods
bask in my altercation.
In this dispute between invisible and ancient worlds;
in drastic circumstances,
under floods,
vodka, love and Metaxa — wasted slow time,
when death started to agree with me,
when death giggled then became a refugee
a shot of alcohol drank up my sanity.
Tumble
Statuesque as a supermodel
or as buff as a bearded hipster,
everything you love
hard
dearly
can and will break, tumble—
Like ice into glass.
Or like ornaments on plastic firs
like empires
Amazon trees
a bra before sex
bitter bedroom
blackout blinds,
dead front lawn
with no green gardens.
Mediterranean sheets
with old and idolized secrets—
Dreams never whispered
or devoured,
complete loneliness bearing
no comedy breaks,
Seasons lie stirred inside
brimmed glasses with cracks,
frigid hard mouthed,
I am depleted;
abandoned by the half-truth
clockworks.
Cape Cod
If you cannot find their addresses,
Roll them inside Metaxa bottles.
Drive to the brim of the ocean-
Cape Cod when rising water
Feels as freezing as an icy
Tundra. Wrap them up in
Pretty silk bows of blue.
Find recycled seashells,
the ones never meant
For any storybooks
Filled with poetry,
That only ghosts
In our separate
Underworlds
Can marvel,
Then read
Aloud.
Christina Strigas is a trilingual poet, raised by Greek immigrants, and has written three poetry books. Her latest, Love &Vodka, has been featured by CBC Books in, “Your Ultimate Canadian Poetry List: 68 Poetry Collections Recommended by you.”
Her fourth upcoming poetry book, Love & Metaxa, will be published by Unsolicited Press
in2021.
In her spare time, Christina enjoys foreign cinema, reading the classics, and cooking traditional Greek recipes that have been handed down from her grandmother.
Twitter: @christinastriga
Instagram : @c.strigas_sexyasspoet
Facebook: Christina Strigas Author