Kalliopy Paleos

​Humans in the Water Cycle

I wanted to say something to you, and you wanted to say something to me and you’re in a plastic bag and I’m in a plastic bag, and both of us are rain and all of us are rain and the plastic bag of my raindrop is my watertight skin, and your watertight skin has webbed your mouth over, so you can’t say anything to me, and I can’t say anything to you and when we roll into the ground it will be the very plink of the stream of hot water first touching the dry floor of the teacup, and I will blossom open into the dirt and you shall do the same and we will roll into one ball together in the ground and so will everyone else and we will roar as an ocean sluicing through the soil and we will rise again like kids going up the cold metal ladder of the diving board, blue-and-rough bouncing under our feet, and I won’t be able to hold your hand anymore and you won’t be able to hold my hand anymore as we’d planned but we love all things vertiginous and tumble forth again without a word.

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Praise for the Adversary

No matter what else I might pretend you are brilliant as the velvet black fish glancing at me under the green water I saw in my dream last night staring forward each time I woke and slipped back down into the depths. Your glossy black head your feathery black hair faintly undulating your gills plucking oxygen from the mossy water. Eyes moving left and right like rough stones. I have caught you in the net of my lymph seeing you everywhere as I stare down from my half-waking days. New leaves on the tree I thought was dead but now gladly see among the living birches. The dog content on my knee sitting among the pines smelling twigs at leisure. You are all of this and my broken ribs too.

Or maybe last night in my dream there was no water but I waded through the grasses carrying bulbs of glass that had been my liver and my kidneys and my lungs to give them to you as you neither took nor spurned them but looked forward toward something else eyelashes tingling with messages received from abroad. I can hear them crackling a bit too now. I shall sit beneath you like a curious rabbit under a great black tree and I shall watch the sun come and watch the sun go and I will lie here sweetly now too, smelling lichen and mosses at leisure until you have finally become you and I have finally become I and the tree the tree, the dirt the dirt and the fish swims away freely without a sound.
 
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What is Left on the Table When My Father Doesn’t Come Home Anymore
 
It wouldn’t have been possible for you to say that by the time I was in your body everything was terrible. By the time I was there, cells splitting, your mouth was choking on the terrible traces of other women’s flesh, nostrils stoppered with their drugstore perfume. The flesh of women, traces of natural scent thrumming stronger without washing. My flesh in yours, amniotic and all-knowing if we believe the sages. Throughout the ages the sages know that belly waters are the safest. Which might be why some days, now, I don’t wash.
 
I won’t wash, and I let the perfume of my skin thrum stronger every day because there is no water, there is no oil or clay or soap that could clean us then, during those days when the terrible engulfed you and therefore me. And so how could you possibly say it, howsoever I, grown and all-knowing, might interrogate you. Howsoever I might berate you and hate you for hiding it, how could you breathe it. That by the time everything was terrible I was only growing because you could not stop me. Because it is terrible, and it engulfs us, that it is possible for it to be impossible to love what grows inside you. Impossible to clean it, impossible to wash from it the traces of other women’s flesh, the clinging smell of perfume in plastic bottles. Bottles on the dirty table, unclean with pearling milk, hoping to be picked up and washed, and filled.
 
**
 
Why I Never Order Cappuccino
 
Because I didn’t like how our tour guide handed me the plastic cup. Because my then-husband took it down in one gulp and told me I was being a bitch to the guy. Because I didn’t care about the Napoleon pistols he promised us cheap. Because I wanted dinner at the old hotel instead, to dine on its prewar china. Because as we walked to the secret antique market our guide kept winking at my ex, saying She doesn’t understand, eh? Women . . . Because our guide had growled, drink it. Because after just one sip, all the bitterness was too much & I spilled it onto the ground. Because the market was just a big field with no end in sight and now it was pitch black out. Because plodding past me, my ex had grunted, You’re so predictable. Because once again in the darkness they wouldn’t turn back to me. Because when I finally caught up my ex was flat on his face, the little white cup loose in the grass. Because I was getting tired now too, and the ground felt soft and strangely wonderful under my heavy granite legs. Because I tried to call my ex’s name but there was a small warm shell instead of a tongue in my mouth. Because I could just make out the little silver knife in our tour guide’s hand. Because he was tugging the rubles from my ex’s wallet, then turned towards me. 
 
**

What the King Wants and What the King Gets

Those years when Louis XIV housed his three mistresses in adjacent royal suites at Versailles, the women’s doors gazed at each other across the marble floor. Her majesty the queen his wife had a pretty set of rooms, elsewhere in the palace.

Look, she doesn’t seem to be whining for a baby, he mumbles into her ear when a tall blonde passes their café booth. At CVS getting a birthday card for his mother, he steers her to the diet pills and stares at her. 

In the first suite, Louis visits Louise, Marquise de la Vallière, whose four pregnancies have taken their toll. Louis pets her English spaniels, teasing that the little beasts’ affection will make up for his waning love. He nestles his plumed hat on his wig, crossing the vestibule to the bejeweled Madame de Montespan, radiantly expecting for the second time.

On their second abortion, staying in his parents’ basement, he won’t stay with her as she inserts the tablets. She won’t remember, years later, why they got into a screaming match as she lay there, but it was likely for her to hurry up and stop crying. Possibly also her throwing up when his mother needed the bathroom. 

Having already buried half of his children and all but one grandchild, Louis secretly marries the Marquise de Maintenon. They read together by the fire, squabbling about keeping the windows open or shut against the palace drafts. She longs for separate beds, but her confessor thinks it unwise, since she has no child. 

At their old café booth, he says his mother’s happy to have him back home. Might even cough up and pay his taxes for the year. He asks her what she will do, now the divorce is final. Probably go overseas as they’d planned, but alone. A new country every two years or so. Above all, nothing confining. 

**
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Kalliopy Paleos studied contemporary American poetry at SUNY Brockport. She recently completed her third full-length novel translation from Greek. Poetry publications include pieces in Mediterranean Poetry and Gnashing Teeth Press; her prose has been included in ERGON Magazine for Greek-American Arts and Letters, The Ekphrastic Review and Flash Boulevard.