poor

Diana Manesi

Writing is bleeding internally    I never get to control love    artesian well with drunken words
Fleeting and flowing on the couch           it’s 37 degrees      7.20 hours        since recession
My fingers are metal coins    {I paid 2.50 euros for cabbage today}
5.20 times      7.20 hours                 
academics take pleasure in killing orcs
                         If a book is not original, if I am not original
                  centuries of orcs to kill and unsettle
One euro glued on my fingers forever, for ever and ever, for every time I untuck my breasts
and smell the skin in between                         baby powder, sweaty and tired
Two euros            unlovable glues                   come and go
Three euros         medusa gloves                    Cixous let’s me have apple-pie 
I love apples        I loved             her                Adam apple               with a smear of testicles sauce on top
Writing costs 3 euros  plus kitchen gloves  plus a room         minus my desire for coins
to change hands, hunt down skills,          sorrow                                            pure       
I will always be poor no matter what     
it’s ok, there’s nothing else to do than pour it in

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Author Bio: Diana Manesi recently published her book “One and whole: One bite” by Queer Ink Publications: http://queerink.gr/en/publication/diana-manesi/. She has also written poems for online poetry magazines- a glimpse of hybrid narrative- and participated at various poetry workshops and readings in Athens and London. She recently completed her thesis in social anthropology with a focus on queer and lesbian feminism in Greece. She has taught anthropology and feminist theory at Goldsmiths College in London and currently works at an Athens-based Feminist Centre for the rights of all women.