2 poems by Maria Taylor

Softades/Softalar, Larnaca District

I walk the dirt road past the cemetery

also known as the sleeping place.

Ahead of me is an abandoned village.

Families frightened away from the south,

as my mother’s were from the north.

Something quivers in rain-starved fields

of tired grass. I sense a presence

before I see a hunting dog. Its body poised.

The land’s too exposed to hide.

I’ve no phone, what use would it be anyway,

out here alone where I’m a hare

in a dog’s eyes, where I’m flesh for teeth.

I daren’t turn my head. Our eyes won’t lock.

I fix my path towards a village left to rot.

and look through doorways into gnarled fields,

into rooms that no longer exist.

Mud-brick collapses as memory does.

Story twist – a farmer materialises,

calls the dog away,

a whimpering puppy now.

I step into a brochure sunset

of amethyst, orange and coral pink

beyond a deserted village our island ruins

they’ll say nothing happened here.

Cousins

Sun kindles over stone-earth

in the refugee district of Limassol,

the colour of bone.

Three boys stand over the dying body

of a Snake-Eyed Lizard.

One boy scoops the tiny reptile

in a dirty hand. The head sags back,

creamy neck and belly exposed.

I’m no longer a cocky tomboy

as I listen to my cousins row

over who’ll take a lighted match

to the lizard’s leg, to see if it burns.

Three boys become men.

Two will go to jail. One will die in a cell

far away from a green village

he would’ve called home.

I walk away into the violent heat

of afternoon, sickened.

Three boys call me back.

Three boys shout look, koita koita!

at the one thing they can control.