Piraeus – prose poem by Gabriela Marie Milton & more news on Literary Revelations

Piraeus by Gabriela Marie Milton

Tongues of white and blue licking the remnants of the old wall. Piraeus, the breeze marries us in its arms, smell of bittersweet oranges, salt, and strong coffee on your chest. The insanity of a lemon phyllo tart grabs at my lips. A nude sea struggles to stay awake.

The same taverna with its small tables, white chairs, and red wild roses crawling on its outside walls. The blue awnings move in the breeze like humongous lungs on a respirator. Three indifferent octopuses dry under the sun.

My train of thought entangles on the rims of your open shirt, somewhere between your curly black hair tied in a ponytail and this insane phyllo tart that still grabs at my lips. It’s something about the ruins of the old wall. The Melian Dialogue, “the strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must.” *

Lord, this is not Melos. Athens lost the war, and I did not think about the Melian Dialogue. I thought about La salle d’attente, Maurice and his box with pills, one of them supposedly filled with poison. Nicholas had to choose.**

Mind games. The other side of Greece.

Where are the three octopuses? Where did they go? The sea is still here: nude, languorous, beautiful. It resurrects the breeze. A pale dizziness falls from the sky. Between my fingers white sand and the frenzy of your kisses. Beauty is danger. Love, please unbutton your shirt more.

The phyllo tart jumps at me, giggles, and turns itself into a blue chocolate box, tied with a golden bow which reads Leonidas, Maitre Chocolatier, 1913.

Oh, don’t make me choose sweet love. Don’t make me choose.

*Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, (431–404 BC)

* *Reference to The Magus by John Fowles, (1965).

Featured image by Gabriela Marie Milton – Piraeus, Greece.

Literary Revelations – Updates

Please go to our Literary Revelations Journal to read the latest updates. We are thrilled to let you know that our publishing house has signed new publication agreements for this calendar year. We are fully booked. We look forward to bring you more outstanding poetry. We work diligently to bring our poets to the #1 Amazon bestselling place in Amazon Hot New Releases – place where they deserve to be. More updates coming soon.

We are also open for art submission.

To know more about us please read our About section:

“We expect work that dazzles the intellect, and delights the soul; work that makes feelings blossom into symphonies of love, beauty, and sorrow. Interpret the silence. Find the place where love was born, and tears are entombed. Be the voice of prophets. Be the soft whisper of Sakura.”

A reminder that both books we published until now have become #1 Amazon bestselling books. Congratulations again to all contributors to our anthology Hidden in Childhood and to Swan Gill on his book, Love, Stars and Paradigms.

Our #1 Amazon bestselling books

Please click on the images to go to Amazon.com

Have a beautiful season everyone.

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology (ed.), Literary Revelations, 2023
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

My Dear Readers,

In everyone’s life there are unforgettable moments filled with magic and light on which our names are engraved forever. I lived one of these moments when Vasiliki Petroudi sent me two of my poems she translated into Greek.

Vasiliki Petroudi lives in Greece. Greece is the land where the ancients took every characteristic of the human soul and intellect and made it into a god. A land where we are not assisting to a simple typonomy of name-place. We are assisting to an associative relationship between us and the projection of us into gods; a projection that for the ancients constituted reality. They embedded it into their daily lives; into weddings and funerals, into the cooking of the meals and into mathematical equations.

Every look at the Parthenon transforms the group image of gods into individual psychology. Our beginning and our end are born at the intersection of the Greek interpretations of notions such as eros, beauty, power, and introspection. Look into a mirror and you will see Greece even if you’ve never visited it.

My favorite novelist – Lawrence Durrell – once wrote:

Other countries may offer you discoveries in manners or lore or landscape; Greece offers you something harder—the discovery of yourself.

Vasiliki Petroudi is a wonderful Greek poet who, among other things, translates poetry from English into Greek. She is working on an incredible project that Literary Revelations will present in June. Until then you can read more about Vasiliki HERE.

I am humbled beyond words that Vasiliki translated two of my English poems into Greek. These translations are part of the project she is working on.

Vasiliki, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Below you can find my English poems and Vasiliki’s translations.

Samos, perhaps Crete by Gabriela Marie Milton

[included in Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020]

on the barren shore
you play your mandolin
I conjugate “to leave” in the voice of trees
the air reverberates expressions of old gods
the space changes its mind
maybe it is Samos, perhaps it is just Crete
traces of death, glimpses of the future
your thoughts are cut in marble
scratches turn to yellow
delineations, conquerors of islands
the shore melts in the waters
your eyes tell prophesies
the time changes its mind
perhaps it was just Samos, maybe it was Crete
the dying mandolin, the smell of ripened olives
an unmade wooden bed
solemnity, delirium
the names of I,
You
We

The Easter of Roses by Gabriela Marie Milton

[included in Women: Splendor and Sorrow I: Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021]

my love
you know that spring will come
peaches will grow on one side of the moon
injured lambs will scream on the other
taste of strawberries
my hair freshly cut
possessed by new ghosts will look for each other
steps on the asphalt heard from cafes
the baptism of rain and thin yellow candles
a verse from Seferis hangs on your lips
the Easter of Roses with its cold morning showers
never to sin your hands nailed in white marble
the rode of your anchor
my love
it’s spring
it’s me
free your hands from the marble

Traslations by Vasiliki Petroudi

From my translation project on Facebook two wonderful poems by @shortprose1 I want to thank Gabriela from the bottom of my heart for trusting her amazing verses to me
I wish you all a beautiful new month🤍@shortprose1 #poetry #poetrycommunity #poetrytwitter #translation pic.twitter.com/ZX19A56jid
— Vasiliki Petroudi (@VPetroudi) May 1, 2023

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

In the mood for you – poem by Gabriela Marie Milton

The richness of the butterscotch sunsets, heated bodies, eyes pregnant with desires, incandescent spaces between the skin & white shirts stiffed with starch, heads turned toward the sea, a rose between your teeth, doors undone, amor, the judgement day is not here, let’s die on the petals of the wind.

featured painting: In the mood for love – MM Ciciovan

Do not forget to visit Literary Revelations, read our journal, and subscribe.

Thank you.

Gabriela Marie Milton
Books:

I am thrilled to let everyone know that Swarn Gill’s new book Love, Stars, and Paradigms released a few hours ago just became #1 Amazon bestseller in the UK, the US, and Canada.

Congratulations to Swarn! My publishing house – Literary Revelations – and I are thrilled. Thank you to those who support and believe in us.

Have a great weekend everyone.

The book is available in all Amazon markets.

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

My dear readers,

I am thrilled to reveal the full cover design of Love, Stars, and Paradigms by Swarn Gill. This stunning poetry collection will be published by Literary Revelations early April.

The art on the cover belongs to Magdalena Gill.

Follow this space, Literary Revelations and my social media, Twitter @sortprose1 and IG @gabriela_marie_milton, for more updates on the release date.

Please read the preface I wrote and support us.

Thank you!

Foreword

Writing a poetry collection is one thing, but to write one in which every poem shines like the brightest star in the sky is to take the reader to an entirely different level, inside a universe in which words permeate hearts and transform souls. This is where the poems of Swarn Gill take you.

While within the pages of this book each poem stands on its own, one can notice thematic issues resembling circumpolar constellations. Swarn Gill’s poetry concerns itself with perennial matters such as: love, pain, identity, social justice, building a better self, rituals of daily life to name just a few. The depth and beauty in his poems are remarkable. In Lovestruck he writes “I chose to face wrathful clouds/and I saw/such beauty in the maelstrom/and though you struck me hard/ you hardened me like glass/ and in those semi-opaque reflections/ we hold, we sip, we float.”

In Diurnal Dreams winds of liberation from the conventions of a society plagued by commercialism blow, “free me from grey/break me out/of concrete prisons/prostrate me/among the daisies/let emerald butterflies/send me to slumber.”

Love and nature are married in a remarkable way in Under Nature’s Power. It’s not a marriage of convenience. It’s osmosis. Nature leads. “The stars were lecherous/making you lay down/in the cool grass/then the moon/made your invitation/clear as glass/what choice did we have/under cruel skies.”

Hold Still is a poem of substance, simplicity, and beauty with a hint of laissez-faire, “there was also/something I was/looking forward to/no matter…. we are the moment/time vibrates.”

Irene Solà wrote, “The infinite dwells in each of us. Like a window on the top of our heads that we didn’t even know was there,” [Canto jo i la muntanya balla] and she continued claiming that only the poet can open that door and reach the infinite. All you must do to know she was right is to read Swarn Gill’s book Love, Stars, and Paradigms.

Literary Revelations is proud to publish such an unbelievable poetry collection.

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Portuguese Guitar

The ocean hammers coffin nails into my bones
The boat too small to carry all my sorrow
I cannot fit into a single bottle the apple of Alcobaça
Levante winds throw roses on my windows
I want you now to save me from this hollow spleen
The magical twelve strings guitar of Fado Português
The twelve apostles of the unknown Christ
To stretch my body till I fall asleep
Between twelve apples
And your lips

featured image: the initials of my first and middle name – Portuguese hand-made tiles

Reminder

Please do not forget the visit Literary Revelations Journal.

Thank you.

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Neurosis

I suspect I suffer from an acute crisis of half-bloomed neurosis. My past emotions do not fully interfere with my current experiences. The converse is true too. No sophistry added. How boring.

I work my magic. I jump in the water dressed in black lingerie made from Calais laces and Lyon silks. I can feel the waves pounding my body while my mind drowns in the ambiguity of the French Nouveau Roman standing mid-way between modernism and post-modernism like a drunken sunset that cannot distinguish between yellow and orange.

The foliage of the sea turns burgundy. Your fingers contour my face.

Oh, you.

I forget that my favorite poet is Arthur Rimbaud with his “A thousand Dreams within me softly burn” and “I shed more tears than God could ever have required.” All I remember is that once I wrote: “I’ve never existed outside of your obsession with me and my interpretations of you.”

There is something about these interpretations that make you burst in cascades of laughter and art your love for me with lust.

One morning, left by my pillow, I found your reply written on a large index card: “I had to bury your existence inside my obsessions. If not, your love could not have been fully stabilized. You above anyone else know that an absolute correspondence in love does not exist. Love is a mathematical singularity.”

From my #1 Amazon bestselling book Woman: Splendor and Sorrow (Vita Brevis Press, 2021)

Reminder

Please remember to visit Literary Revelations site for new posts and updates on the upcoming poetry book Love, Stars, and Paradigms by Swarn Gill.

Thank you.

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Poem – Poetic Prose

You knew where the world began. I will find too. I will drown in the sea where olive trees end, and Rimbaud’s atrocious sunsets start. I will become the forget-me-not of the waters.

Do you remember when there were 14 days in a week, all of them Sundays?

My blood, first thought to be of a certain type. Now classified differently. In the entire world there is only a very small number of people that have the same type of blood as I do. It must be a mistake. Can we start over?

Sweet love don’t cry.

The 15^th day of the week will be the day of mirth. Yellow laughter and photographs stretched from my soul to the ledge of the windows.

Waters.

Forget-me-not.

featured image: Claude Monet – Water Lilies

Reminders

Please do not forget our incredible collection Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology. You can buy it HERE.

Please visit Literary Revelations Website and subscribe. There is a new weekend interview up. You can read it HERE.

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Dear Readers,

I am delighted to be featured in New York Glamour Magazine the third time. I was asked to first speak about myself and then about the anthology Hidden in Childhood [Literary Revelations, 2023]. I am grateful to everyone who spread the word about this stunning anthology. I am grateful to everyone who bought it. I am proud to have brought together the voices of 150 poets to speak to you in more than 270 poems about the trauma and the joy of childhood. Hidden in Childhood is a stunning and important book. It became a #1 Amazon bestseller for 5 days after its release. Yesterday it recaptured its #1 place for the entire day.

You can get the anthology and read the poetry of those stunning writers HERE.

Apologies if I did not return some of your love. I will visit with you as soon as can. None of you knows that I have an extremely rare autoimmune condition. It is so rare that it’s basically understudied. There is no treatment for it. For years it left me alone. Now, I am going through a flare up. All medical tests were done, and there is no damage to any of my internal tissues. I am ok but I will need time to recover. Please be patient with me and I will visit your sites soon.

Now let’s go back to happier things. I am thrilled I was asked by New York Glamour Magazine to talk about me. However I am beyond delighted I could talk about Hidden in Childhood and your marvelous poetry.

Here are some snippets from the interview:

“Yes, I am an American, but I am also a child of Europe. I have been fascinated, mesmerized, frightened, brought to tears, left speechless by the greatest writers of Europe. I still am. Later, I discovered America’s greatest: Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, Faulkner, Hemingway, Miller, Poe. Yet, in my darkest moments – like those rare moments in which I cannot write – only the writings of Lawrence Durrell bring my muse back.”

“Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology is our first publication. It comprises over 150 authors and more than 270 poems. It is available on Amazon and for almost 5 days was the #1 Amazon Hot New Release in Poetry Anthologies. As the editor, curator, and publisher of this book, I am honored and humbled that so many poets entrusted me with their work. The beauty and the power of the poems included in Hidden in Childhood brought me to tears. The poems of the contributors are stunners. As I wrote in the foreword of the book, if you open the pages of this poetry collection, you will be mesmerized by the talent of the contributors, and by the range of stylistic approaches they use to recreate the world of childhood“

Please read the entire interview here:

Gabriela Marie Milton – “Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology.”

Thank you!

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

I am thrilled to let you know that Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology published by Literary Revelations is now a #1 Amazon bestseller. This book was made possible by the gorgeous poems you, poets from around the world, sent us. Thank you for trusting Literary Revelations with your poetry. Congratulations! You are now #1 Amazon bestselling poets. And we are filled with joy.

We planned the official release of the book on January 31. The book was on Amazon on the 26. However, not all Amazon markets were populated [at the hour I write they are still not fully populated] and the book’s categories we not showing. Even now only one category shows. In addition we had other few things to take care of.

However, people found out about the book on the 27th of January. In a matter of hours Hidden in Childhood became a #1 Amazon bestseller.

I am filled with joy and gratitude. Thank you for buying the book. Thank you for supporting Literary Revelations Publishing House.

On our pre-launch Hidden in Childhood show: Our gracious host Victoria Onofrei of Radio Bloomsbury will broadcast the show on Sunday January 29, at 6pm London Time. If you want to listen you can do it here https://www.bil.ac.uk/bloomsburyradio/

You can buy the book here:

Thank you. Have a great weekend.

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books: