Kalliste
Brooklyn Copeland

Keep it up with olive
oil soap, just like Sophia

Loren, they call
from their chipped sea

tile stoops, their emblematic
brooms like spears piercing

their breasts. Milk
of goats, silk sponge:

keep it up with olive
oil, fresh, cold-pressed.

Swab it on your crow's feet,
your feathered lips, they call

from their high stools, those
crones on Dodecanese.

Sophia Loren, the school girls
call: who the hell is she?

We keep it up with olive
pits spat into the street.

1996 © 2006