Nicholas Samaras

Directions for the Kidnapped Child at Three Years Old

Take this cigarette and put it in your mouth.
Close your lips around it and breathe in as deep as you can.

Reach out and put your hand on this stove.
That’s what hot means.

Reach up and open the hall’s tiny door to the incinerator.
This is where bad children can be thrown, anytime.

Do you see this belt? Don’t make me take it off.
If you talk when I’m home, I’ll have this belt

talk back to you. Get over here
and hand me the Mickey Mouse comic book

I brought you yesterday. The way I rip his body
to shreds is the way I can do it to anybody.

Cry all you like. You’ll breathe
when I tell you to breathe.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Nicholas Samaras is from Patmos, Greece (the “Island of the Apocalypse”) and, at the time of the political Greek Junta (“Coup of the Generals”) was brought in exile to be raised further in America. He has lived in Greece, Asia Minor, England, Wales, Brussels, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, Jerusalem, thirteen states in America and he writes from a place of permanent exile. Currently, he is writing a poetry textbook, and critiques client-poetry by appointment.