Anna M Agathangelou

Combat breath

The last time I saw my uncle
He was standing next to a small house
They turned it into an army outpost
In a khaki short-sleeved shirt
A cigarette in his mouth, 
the smoke circling the blue clear sky
to quieten the roars of the thunder in his stomach, they struck like lightning. 
he counts the sandbags, the one on top of the other
Trying to guess which one will give in

His final goodbye-
straddled through as a wave that becomes absorbed into the ocean—
--a combat breathing on the borders of a barbed wire.

Dreams and desires 
blown away faster than leaves 
in the gushing wind. 
The fearsome storm. He stops. He disappears. 

Some nights I hear him running 
I play the last conversation again and again-- 

Was his last breath a song or a prayer begging the gods in strident tones?

--I hold it in my mouth like the light that pierces  
Through 
	The wound
Until my tongue grows numb
I lay awake to keep this moment alive
For a few more minutes.

We have the same eyes 
He and I 
The kind that circles into the depths of oceans
the source of life.

27 years later—some bones remain and buried.  
Others are left behind on that same spot. 
The here turned into a kind of his first grave.

And there I thought the visit was not a last goodbye
But states are gluttonous like mouths of sharks--
Instead of being the sacred grounds that one can sit still and breath the fresh air—
They devour with no end--foaming with broken bodies
And yet—this land is us and cracks open-- 
singing songs which the cacophonies of anthems 
cannot put out--tearing up and giving birth 
to beautiful olive trees
 

A hyena

50 million tons of debris
cats and dogs liquified
smeared on the streets
The vultures circling above
Rats amass below

A single hyena
amid the rubble and kicked up dust
Fixes hazel eyes on you and yours

You stare through me
Gazing beyond the horizon
Trying to hold onto some living thing
My silent words
pass like threads
through the eye of a needle

Yours are stitched in blood and flesh 
lifted by a sea breeze
‘You saw it all
And did nothing”

Beloved child, mother, grandmother, son, boyfriend,
some bagged, others laying in hastily dug graves 
All things to swipe passed,
dismissed as breakfast continues
Unabated

Realtors chirp about
good bones
A most spectacular development opportunity
Once the flattening is complete
  
Olive and lemon trees,
children and this land
Razed and burned

Staring still
eyes lock on yours
through the rectangular screen a single swipe
And the hyena is never forgotten

 

Anna M. Agathangelou hails from a small island called Cyprus.  Poetry for her is invention, a real leap into the abyss.