This blue cheek is what happens
when you crunch potato crisps too loudly.
This arm is what happens
when you spill milk on the linoleum floor.
This hair tuft is what happens
when you don’t move fast enough.
This eye is what happens
when you don’t answer the second time.
This leg is what happens when you mouth
back and the strap talks back louder than you.
This is how you learn
body parts, when the man is a medic
and you don’t need to be brought
to a real doctor. This is what happens
when you are born in a small body
and the apartment is anonymous
and the neighbours just
turn their music up louder.
Nicholas Samaras is from Patmos, Greece (the “Island of the Apocalypse”) and, at the time of the Greek Junta military dictatorship (“Coup of the Generals”) was brought in exile to be raised further in America. He’s lived in Greece, England, Wales, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, Jerusalem, thirteen states in America, and he writes from a place of permanent exile. His first book, Hands of the Saddlemaker, won The Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His current book is American Psalm, World Psalm (Ashland Poetry Press, 2014). He is completing a new manuscript of poetry and a memoir of his childhood years lived underground.