Imagine a green slope,
the neat rows of trees.
Sun pools in your eyes
and laps the hollows
of your upturned face.
Of course there are shadows:
a semaphore of leaves
tattoos the earth’s skin
as your passing bodies
sketch their shape against grass.
Everything is a dance:
birds, flies, the cicadas’
accento, brillante.
Words are many, as many
as the grove’s virgin olives.
Take one softly in your mouth,
let teeth close on flesh
as if trapping the thinness
of a butterfly wing.
Hold it gently, gently
bite harder. Enjoy the tongue’s
flutter and tingle
until you hit stone resistance.
Stop dead, suck each word clean,
then spit out the pit.
Eugenia Loli is a filmmaker a collage artist.
Originally from Greece, she’s now spent many years
living in California. Before art took over her life she
worked in the technology sector. Find out more at
eugenialoli.tumblr.com.
Sarah James is a prize-winning journalist,
photographer, short fiction writer and poet,
with her first poetry-play The Magnetic Diaries
being staged this year. Her debut collection
Into the Yell won third prize in the multi-genre
International Rubery Book Awards 2011 and
she has a collection, plenty-fish, due out with
Nine Arches Press in the summer. Sarah also
runs the small poetry imprint, V. Press, and
enjoys collaboration, poetryfilm and artistic
commission, including poems on Worcestershire
buses and muralled on a café wall. Find her at
www.sarah-james.co.uk.