Completely Naked

Written by Popi Aaroniada

Translated from the Greek by Katerina Angelaki Rooke

Narrated by Bill Wolak

Greece                  

. . . I didn’t put

a curtain to the window

the glare hides well

the mark of the hard genes

to so many attempts of life

folds of sincerity

are not needed

if I want to plant

a candle between my legs

to the womb of my mind

to enlighten

the first dusk

face downward

in oak flesh

I am counting

thorn imperfections

and knobs

I give life a meaning

luckily

I didn’t put a curtain

to the window

they say that you cease

to exist

if nobody sees you

I am ablaze

to be buried

to be totally visible . . .

Popi Aroniada is a Greek poet and author who for the last fifteen years has published  in various literary magazines and poetry anthologies in Greece and abroad. She has published six poetry collections and one novel, and has a selection of short stories about to be published. She has received distinctions and awards in national and international poetry competitions. She is the Secretary of the Board of the Poet Circle of Greece.

Katerina Angelaki Rooke was a distinguished Greek poet and translator who passed away in January of 2020.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dorit Weisman is an award-winning poet with international repute. A multidimensional writer, she is also a novelist, a translator, an editor, a film-maker and a literary organizer. She is the recipient of the EASAL, 2018, Paris; the International Poetry Prize Alfonso Gatto, 2016, Italy; and the respected Yehuda-Amichai Prize for Poetry. She has published 11 volumes of poetry, 2 books of prose, and 2 books of translations. She translates the international “poem of the week” from English to Hebrew, every week.

 

 

Joanna Chen is a literary translator and essayist. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Mantis, Asymptote and Poetry International, among others. She is the translator of Less Like a Dove (Shearsman Books, 2017), Frayed Light (Wesleyan University Press, 2019) and My Wild Garden (Penguin/Random House, 2019). She writes a column for The Los Angeles Review of Books and teaches at the Helicon School of Poetry.