Clockwork Dream by Elisávet Makridis


 
 

There’s hardly a soul here save for the accordion-
Silence of true fingers,

The deep hand that formed us, & every little iris.
I am on the tree

Near the brief lake, my body on the body of the tree
Near the body of the lake

When you drift past, early wind post-detonation
& full of frolic.

Like a visitor, against your disappearing, I invented you.

If you had prayer it was not traced through me.

If you had speech it would be red filigree.

If you were kiss you would be the blind boy’s

Who lost both arms in the war & reads with his lips.

Make a list for the heart. That is the length of it. The word

Up & leaves like the spirit & all its steep machinery.

Allow me this clockwork dream. I promise to scatter

The tinctures of grief, marvelous & not scattering.

To rise beneath the almostgone lintel of everything.

To see the trough of galloping withness close into itself.

 
 
 

Elisávet Makridis is a poet raised in Queens, NY and Greece. She studied psychology and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College where she was the recipient of the Andrea Klein Willison Poetry Prize (2015) and the Lucy Grealy Prize for Poetry (2016). Her work has been published in Bellevue Literary Review, and is forthcoming in Crab Creek Review and Frontier Poetry. She can be found online at elisavetmakridis.com and on Twitter: @elisahvet.