Poetry: Propulsion by Elisávet Makridis
Elisávet Makridis delivers a technical scorcher, a palindrome that shifts and moves with precision. The mirrored stanzas deliver surprise, though you’ve already read them, fresh emotion, though you already know the story. “Propulsion” is a compact mirror to the face of loss, phantom to phantom to phantom.
Propulsion
after Natasha Trethewey’s “Myth”
All summer was the dent I slept atop.
Where did you go, after you shattered the moon
Into a thousand eyes like a torn geranium?
The house, in this dream, is not yet
empty of you & I am searching. The cupboard
the bookcase, the chiffarobe—
each surface gifted propulsion. In the black forest
on the other end of Time, you write a delicate O
against the open mouth of wanting.
*
Against the open mouth of wanting—
on the other end of Time, you write a delicate O.
Each surface gifted propulsion, in the black forest:
The bookcase, the chiffarobe,
Empty of you & I am searching the cupboard.
The house, in this dream, is not yet.
Into a thousand eyes like a torn geranium:
Where did you go, after you shattered? The moon,
all summer, was the dent I slept atop.
Elisávet Makridis
Elisávet Makridis is a poet raised in Queens, NY and Greece. Prior to graduating from Sarah Lawrence, she was the recipient of her alma mater's Andrea Klein Willison Poetry Prize (2015) and Lucy Grealy Prize for Poetry (2016). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, Bellevue Literary Review, The Sarah Lawrence College Review, the Cliffhanger, and Broken Yolk. Find her on Twitter: @elisahvet or visit elisavetmakridis.com.
