appealing

The Maynard
Spring 2020

Catherine Strisik
0:00
 
 

Humid Weather

—after Lucie Brock-Broido

On Google, when you search, you will find me

well-mannered with the linen handkerchief,
the one I used to get away

with dabbing. I strolled in Crete, sweating
in the agora with iced fish

and Greek men, some of whom leaned
to touch me. Church bells rang. I did not count how many.

I chose the companionship of the distant
foreigner because he

wrote tongue-tied and slept tied
to me and remedied me

to the flushed body and then
to terra cotta. In humid weather I am

raw to the primal.
No white beans, no straw, no woman’s cycles, only

the Ottoman house,
the crazy owner’s singing rising

inside the high walls’ missing stones
of phyllite in the decrepit alley in the neighborhood of Lakkos.

This week the humidity in the agora is so thick
no one sees me as real.

On Google, on one of the links, you will read about me
as a paramour on the flat rooftop

in my fragrant garden,
in tiger lily chiffon, my bared feet, my hymns,

the evening star—nothing hidden, I
sightsee for pleasure.

Curious, does he? Is he warmed by the wind
at the very moment I am warmed by the wind?

Curious, is he damp, somewhere, in haze?