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.