"The poems in Perishable by Stelios Mormoris pulsate with musical intensity, as they alternate between ode and lament, sensual pleasure and the ever-presence of death. Whether paying homage to weeds, celebrating watermelon or ballerinas, Mormoris paints a world in which ‘traffic sizzles,’ loneliness ‘burns,’ where mortal folly and resilience reveal the ‘cold lesson of distance’ and ‘terrible birds of our derision.’ Searing and poignant, Perishable moves through ‘thickets of diary,’ past ‘activists spitting thorns’ and ‘sweet alarm of children playing,’ toward a most human pressing question: ‘Is it possible to be / reborn with grace?’ With this collection, Stelios Mormoris makes space for us to contemplate such yearning and evanescence."
