Fani Papageorgiou was born in Athens in 1975. Her Greek book Zero and One (To Miden kai to Ena, Kastantiotis Publications, Athens 2000) won the Maria Rally award for first novel. Her poems have appeared in magazines and literary journals in the US where she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, in the UK where she was a finalist for the 2009 MsLexia Women’s Poetry Competition and in Australia.
Fani Papageorgiou’s book When You Said No, Did You Mean Never? (Shearsman Press, UK, 2013) won the Hong Kong Poetry Prize, judged by Ha Jin.
Her second poetry book, Dolores Park will be published in the US in 2014.
They went to a bar in Fiskardo
had three whiskeys each.
What color are your eyes, she asks
twisting the ring on her index finger
you tell me, he replies
opening them even wider.
Eggshell blue
also known as Robin Egg Blue
is an official Crayola color.
It approximates the shade of the eggs
laid by the American Robin,
yet also the exact hue
of the Ionian Sea.
If you drop something on the floor, he says
but pick it up fast enough
it doesn’t count.
You can put that peanut
right back in your mouth, he says
and she laughs
crunching the ice in her glass.
Flirting, like chess
is an open information game.
Come on, he says
grabs her by the wrist
walks out into the darkness
on the pebble-beached cove
and for a few seconds
maybe five
he lets go of her hand
and she wonders
if that didn’t count.
For other contributions by Fani Papageorgiou, please follow the links below:
Poetry in this post: © Fani Papageorgiou
Published with the permission of Fani Papageorgiou