Christos Kalli, born in Larnaca, Cyprus, is currently studying for his undergraduate degree in English Literature at the University of Glasgow. His poetry has been translated into French, shortlisted for the Jane Martin Poetry Prize, and his INT. NIGHT was a finalist for the Sutra Press Chapbook Contest. It can be found / is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, The Adroit Journal, The Los Angeles Review, the minnesota review, [PANK], Barely South Review, Dunes Review, among others. He is a Poetry Reader for The Adroit Journal. Visit him here. ---------
Prometheus
for my mother
In the end we believe in Gods in vain,
she said dropping her eyelid-bombs
over the part were eyelids drop
when eyes have nothing left. To say
that lately we come here to leave
is to say that the first thing we remember
is ending. Once, we came here and stayed.
Winter’s curfew kept us warm.
Song, from the night machine.
Prometheus is leaning against it, coughing
phlegm and blood and almost-cold lava,
finger-counting the hours until the sun.
I imagine somewhere fire burns steal.
I imagine other people feel what I feel
on balconies. This house belongs
to the cold. As much as this cold belongs
in this house. We might not have time
for Are you still alive. Tell us now
what you see behind those eyelids.
Sad Prometheus no longer melts the cement
he walks. I keep making Gods believe in me.
I ask them: would you touch.
Let me repeat: would you at least kneel
in front of her. Kiss. Her forehead. It burns.
Trust me: you need her fire,
she needs your cold breath.
Sweet-ish
As if chewed and spat back in the autumn streets,
I am walking towards somewhere, trying not to think
of what these faces scream in climax. Ahead of me,
the man under the naked red maple tree, looks like
the type that confuses cumming with praying:
Oh God Oh Lord Forgive Me Thank You Amen
Stop. The sweet-ish air crushing on my face, as if fallen
from a high-rise, reminds me that I am where I am today,
which is nowhere, by being nobody, and then somebody
that nobody else wanted to be. Or be with. And before
I was used I used to be only dry particles humping each other
for freedom and fun and now at least I am spat
into a human-shaped mould and made something out of that.