Plastic Plates

On the wall, photos of when I was a boy, 
a postcard from Greece, a calendar.
Mum tells me she is happy, then turns
away. Rain falls heavy.

When Medea killed her two sons,
she knew what she was doing.
Mum has read a lot of books, but
I don’t think she’s read Medea, 

or knows that an earlier version of the myth 
has her kill two of her children accidentally.
A gull screams outside mum’s flat.
Medea was blamed as it was easy,

to turn a knowing woman 
into a murderer. I remember
when I was young, mum in the kitchen
rolling dough into kourabiethes

and boiling Greek coffee in a briki
when my godfather and his wife
came to visit. He argued politics with dad,
his wife quiet,

then called mum out of the kitchen.
But she stayed till she served.
Now mum is on her own she doesn’t cook,
eats takeaway off plastic plates.

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Ion Corcos was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1969. He has been published in Cordite, Meanjin, Westerly, Plumwood Mountain, riddlebird, and other journals. He is the author of A Spoon of Honey (Flutter Press, 2018).