Captain says three weeks, there’s a monastery overlooking Argostoli harbor, you scrabble up a stone staircase between houses to attain the vista, it’s quiet there (no longer a working monastery, but not ruined either), you just sit so long as you can beat the sunset up the rocks, sometimes a goat clacks by reminding you of yesterday’s cliffside climb in the rental car at Fiskardo (“automatic” in Greek is off-tomato), captain says no, fortnight, OK you’ll have to see Sami next time, the tavernas all serve the same branzino dinner and it’s good everywhere every time, captain says no, one week, beer is cheap and they don’t let you leave without having some dessert, it’s always donuts, it becomes free if you try to refuse, there’s nowhere to get to after dinner, captain says no, three days at the outside, make sure to buy presents for the kids, it’s hard to tell the difference between a road and a driveway back there outside the town, captain says no, report to the vessel and stand by, was it nice.
Eric Weiskott teaches poetry at Boston College. He is working on two book-length projects, one creative and one critical, both braiding together fourteenth-century English and contemporary US poetry. His poems appear in Texas Review, Inverted Syntax, Exacting Clam, and Versal.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
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