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

 

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)