Perishable

Stelios Mormoris is a resident of Boston and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, who lived in Paris most of his life, working as an executive in the beauty industry. Stelios is currently chief executive officer of Scent Beauty, Inc. He has held positions on the boards of the French Cultural Center of Boston, ACT-UP, Historic New England, and the Fragrance Foundation.

"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."

• i. Lamentations1 - Belle-Île*2 - Old Girl4 - The Stream*5 - Mushrooms*7 - Crossing*9 - Indigo*10 - Eau de Parfum*12 - The Mourner*14 - Interruptus*15 - Vespers[10 poems, 17 pages]ii. Flora Mortis18 - In The Roses20 - Baltimore Spring*22 - Yià Yià24 - Watermelon*26 - Ballerina28 - Homage to Weeds*29 - Spangled30 - La Tour Eiffel32 - Sigh:33 - Arrangements[10 poems, 17 pages]iii. Perishable35 - Party At The Mercer37 - It Is My Revolution40 - Jingle-Jangle41 - Ken & Barbie43 - Ode To Herringbone44 - The Quarrel46 - Perishable*