Poem by Kate Hill-Charalambides

RAVENOUS

Larnaca port, a squid glides in glass transparency.
The crystal sky in a saucepan lid caps the sea.

I sip commanderia, munch halloumi and pastitsios
watch bodies tasting of salt sizzle under parasols

remember the skinny yayas in their long black dresses
offering an egg and coffee, eyes glinting silver tresses.

Now tourists binge beer, full breakfast, milky teas.
Their waists sag ready to pop like ripe cherries.

On my lap the hazel dove-eyes of a boy look back
from a magazine, his skinny arm picks rice extract

from the side of a dirty cup, as a scummy crust
soup-slop is served in a cauldron, colour of rust.

A girl, bowl outstretched hurls her arm through a railing 
upper lip raised, eyes triggered for tears, nostrils flairing.

Sixty hours to ship food from Larnaca, fifteen before.
I sit here and simmer feeling unappeased and sore.

In September almost seventy six thousand tons.  
In October five thousand eight hundred tons.

It’s the lowest delivery since the beginning of the war
whose tentacles tighten a grip, on the opposite shore.

This poem was first published in Snakeskin in February 2025.

THEME: Childhood Hunger

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Kate Hill-Charalambides, originally from London, enjoys triple nationality: British/French and Greek Cypriot and lives in Alsace in France. Her poetry has appeared in Dreich, Snakeskin, Cerasus Poetry #4 and #5, Piker Press, Amethyst Review, the anthology It will happen by chance, The Dawn Treader and Outposts.

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