Body and Soul

by Olga Broumas

There is a joke it goes in Greece
that summer there was a futbol
match and the husband had
lost his lady. BITCH he shouted
after her WHORE WOMAN HEY YOU
BITCH. Greece is civilized
the cop said call your wife
by name. I can’t the man
said. Call her name
the cop said. Not allowed
the man said. Call her name I said the cop
said if you don’t the man said in the Greek futbol
stadium he said
ELEUTHERIAAAAAAAAA

 

(from AGNI 10/11 & 56)

Olga Broumas’s chapbook, Soie Sauvage, will be published this summer by Copper Canyon Press. Beginning With O, from Yale University, appeared in 1977. (1979)