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Poems written during the Coronavirus Outbreak 2020
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Zoe Karathanasi Paris, France Zoe Karathanasi is originally from Greece
but now lives in Paris, France. She has an MA in Poetry with
distinction from the Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work
has appeared or is forthcoming in various online and print
publications, such as Ink Sweat and Tears, The
Interpreter’s House, Tears in the Fence and Under the
Radar. She is working towards a first collection.
To My Hometown in Lockdown I always loved getting there by car,
having traversed most of the country,
and home started when I crossed the first settlements built on the river’s
estuary, the Roman stations of Via Egnatia,
the sugar and tomato factories, now closed,
with their stench of rotting carcass, the hospital-white tobacco plant, where my kin and kith have worked. I drove past roadkill, oftentimes a fox, its tail like a burning torch, and in the yellow light I saw those dim but much-loved faces among the corn stalks. And for the last eight miles or so, before entering my hometown through a maze of narrow, overbuilt
streets, I’d gaze at the Rhodope mountains now held in the same fixed distance like a mirage.
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