Panagiota Doukas

Panagiota is an undergraduate studying English and Creative Writing at Indiana University, Bloomington, where she spends her time volunteering at a collectively-run, non-profit radical bookstore. She is currently beginning work on a small collection of poetry as part of a senior thesis project. This is her first published piece. 

Greek Handcrafts

They made a zig-zag fence on the edge

of the dirt-paved road, those heaps of worn and abandoned tires.

They echoed the engines of German trucks, which hummed the village to sleep.

Cradling the black, warm tire skins like dead animals we longed to eat,

we took them home in our arms.

During war, you learn to improvise—

so my dad took his only knife and cut clean through the muddied skin of a tire.

He pulled out the smooth inner lining, cut out a small square, folded two edges together

to a point like a bird’s beak, pinched the back and sewed up the front and sides.

Looks like their boats he said, and handed me my new shoes.