Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume One Nov-Dec 2026.
The In-Between Place, poems by Elsa Korneti.
Enclaves of Numbers
How I despise
life’s administrators—
those who polish it,
slice it into pieces,
organize it,
categorize it,
tidy it away
inside their perfect boxes.
It is I who speak—
the prisoner,
the one who silently served
his sentence
inside the enclaves
of inhospitable numbers.
The In-Between Place
Fear lives neither here
nor there.
It inhabits a place in between—
between what already hurts you
and what you fear
is waiting to hurt you.
Fear is the shudder
of being suspended
with nowhere to belong.
Confrontation
On the battlefield of an age
a fierce confrontation
was under way.
People stood
face to face
with their demons.
And just before
the reckoning,
they asked them:
Would you like
to introduce yourselves
once again?
Who Do You Think You Are?
I am a product
of processed
Imaginary Reality.
I am what someone once imagined—
or fantasized—
me to be.
And I learned
to cultivate that fantasy
until it bore fruit,
until it made me
blooming and free—
free to live a life
which, perhaps,
others would call mistaken,
but which, to me,
is right.
The Crowd
The crowd is me.
The crowd is you.
The crowd is all of us.
Defenseless people,
hostages to a sequence
that still makes no sense.
People simmering
inside a universal pressure cooker
at human temperature.
Trust Reason
From childhood
we are taught
that reason
separates
the true from the false,
the real from the imagined,
the visible from the invisible,
the number from the letter.
This is how
the obedient fall asleep.
Until one day
you wake.
And then, finally,
you understand:
Reality is the enemy.
And you—
you are the mad one.
You know.
Human Lights
Once, we gazed in awe
at the tiny heads of stars
glittering
in the pitch-black sky
like pins
piercing the darkness.
Today, beneath
an excess of artificial light,
darkness itself
has vanished.
City life has become
a kind of struggle
against the light
of the stars.
Now you see them everywhere—
walking
to their own rhythm,
often bent
beneath the unbearable weight
of an Excessive Reality.
© Elsa Korneti
Elsa Korneti was born in Munich, Germany, but grew up in Greece where she still resides. She is a Greek poet, essayist and poetry translator. Her career has been similarly diverse: studies in finance were followed by work as a journalist. She has published sixteen books of poetry, short stories, essays and translations. Two of her poetry collections and one short stories collection have been distinguished as shortlisted for the National Award. Her poetry has been translated into several languages and is also featured in various foreign anthologies and magazines. In 2026 she has been awarded in Italy the Mediterranean Prize of Poetry.