Kouzi Street

The twang of a bedspring, the crack of cars and yellow trolleys on the hacked streets of Ambelokipi's midmorning, as Mavraki leans to the edge of his sway-backed bed and sets his feet on cold tile. On the fifth floor a woman beats a red flocatti. Her wicker slaps like gunshots over the dull bleating of trapped cars. In his tilted window frame, a landscape--- the stadium's poured concrete shell, the sky's sliver over the blank gaze of brown shutters, the horizon close enough to spit on. He spoons coffee in the small copper pot, lights the Petro-Gaz and a cigarette with the same match. His little baglamá hangs like a spoon from a nail on the wall. He picks it up with blunt fingers and strums, till Anatolia's mourning clatters like coins thrown against a pane of glass. On the walk beneath Mavraki's window a lame pensioner licks his thumb and counts Friday's crumpled bills. He hears the chink-chink of the baglamá above the traffic, adjusts his black arm band, swears and starts again. Across the street a woman runs after a moving bus.

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