One Sentence Poems

Hilary Sideris Cal We four old children conference call from Santa Barbara, Brooklyn, Washington, Wausau, about our mom’s new friend Caldwell who goes by Cal and other tall strong men who don’t exist and never knock, but walk right in, then disappear with her diamonds. Hilary Sideris works for CUNY Start, a program for underserved, […]

Hilary Sideris Transport I take the Athens metro, my main means of metaphor, purchase for one euro what I will never know enough to read, so I can say parakalo, ephemerida, news- paper, please. Hilary Sideris is delighted to have a poem forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic.    

Hilary Sideris Diacritical I place Greek stress in every word, a tilting stroke, an act of linguistic kindness my English can’t reciprocate. Many years ago as a child in Indiana with 20/20 vision, Hilary Sideris shot her neighbor with a BB gun.    

Hilary Sideris The Training We rated ourselves on a scale of one to five on how often we asked for the person in charge, found flesh-colored blemish cover that matched ours, how often we waited in long lines, called the cops or had them called on us, then stood against the window- less room’s walls […]

Hilary Sideris Ammonia I miss my still closed gym, walking uphill on the elliptical’s steep slope, entitled to an hour alone at work day’s end without you asking if I’ve seen your phone or if I knew the ancient Romans cleaned with urine. Many years ago, as a child with 20/20 vision in Indiana, Hilary […]

Hilary Sideris Red River, April 2020 At JBS mothers & daughters chop shoulder to shoulder, sweat, sneeze, scream over machines in Ixilean, Tagalog, Mai Mai about Wuhan’s flattening curve, New York’s sharp spike, the budding trees like lungs turned upside down in a flat land prone to flooding. Many years ago, as a child with […]

Hilary Sideris East Ninth Street There is no sadness like a boarded-up mint green frame house, eyes, mouth nailed shut, putting its spin on Chris and Anne, who lived there seven years before they split and sold it at a loss.   Many years ago, as a child with 20/20 vision in Indiana, Hilary Sideris […]

Hilary Sideris 1609 It’s been so long that when I text the link to a Times piece about Manhattan’s tulip trees out of whose soft, straight trunks the Lenape dug their canoes, the trout teeming in streams, the West Side’s white sand beach, so many flowers Dutch sailors smelled them from the sea, and say […]