Accident Memories
“To Burcu for being so real”
The alarm went off.
I slammed it; today had turned out rotten too.
Blood-red days were rare.
You were dozing off in a tilted, broken-framed photo.
I had shattered it during an accident.
The wheel was spinning midair,
cat around her tail,
The phone full of static,
and unease crept into me* like wolves from all the noise
— they were probably listening to us.
I was the old boss of evening memories.
That was the last thing I remembered.
I could have been at the very bottom of a confession
There was probably a table nearby full of social butterflies.
I might have fought with a cab driver as well, maybe.
Oh God, this pillow had such strong biceps,
and my head was once again left incomplete.
The poem had no echo, it came and hit me morning after morning.
Even if lead was poured**,
blue bead eyes shattered somewhere close to my life.
No organization claimed responsibility for the attack.
The best thing was imam to read me***,
the best thing was to believe in whispers.
it was best to wait for them to come, helpless as a casualty
As ants carried my feet like crumbs of bread.
Who would sit down in front of a blank page after me.
How many women had come, how many women would pass
I was sick of these heroic women—
did every one of them have to be a hero?
Couldn’t one just be the woman of her poem?
And these women were blackmailing me
with my picture taken on Valentine’s Day
face twisted in anger, giving the finger.
God damn them.
Be empty. Be empty. Be empty.****
At least four more women could fit into my poetry.
“Bark, bark, and you’ll open up," I told the hungover dog inside me.
Burcu and I, after drinking plenty in the evening,
decided to start an organization
to put those who don’t know their boundaries^
back inside their boundaries.
Our abbreviation would be BTO
because we were drunk,
and people with boundary issues ultimately end up with tuberculosis.
We came up with a slogan for our promotional campaign:
"Serhat is not our limit; it is the name of our first love."
Then, with slogans scribbled on napkins,
we launched our first flyer-pasting operation.
I have a pile of accident memories
My eyes kept sinking constantly—
not the Titanic, just a fishing boat at best.
I took out my lenses and put on my cat instead.
It felt better now, as if I were one of the people.
I was a 2.75 myope and had no intention of getting laser surgery.
When the eye does not see, the heart endures towards the humanity.
The Mariah Carey on the giant screen was swinging her legs
it wasn't right, it didn't suit, it was a shame.
Where was the romance,
was this woman mocking us?
In the morning we'd have a look on our face
where the fever had been knocked down with vinegar and water.
Whenever I tried to hide myself,
I hit the bottom of confessions.
Whenever I avoided writing,
I soaked the bathroom with descaler.
When I dodged writing,
blue waters foamed on the dirt between the tiles.
My god, how can a human be so creative.
Burcu wasn’t afraid of “causing trouble”
We were the faction of a party unafraid of trouble.
Every empty bar we dragged our feet into would fill up.
My right shoulder angel was aching,
while the left one tickled my ear with its wings.
“At school’s tea parties, they duped our mothers,” I told Burcu,
“and sterilized them.”
It was a lame topic for a bar that just got full.
Burcu glared.
“So where’s Python Pakize^^ then?”
Burcu glared again.
Had I been a fetus selling tissues in heaven in my past life?
Why was this girl glaring at me like that?
When I was young, I didn’t have to run to the WC every time I drank beer.
I cried so much while drinking
th beer gushed out of my eyes.
But as I aged, both I and the beers learned what’s right.
As I hurriedly searched for my high heels at the doorway,
the eyes in the back of my head saw Burcu smile.
Of course, she had to smile a little after all this clowning.
Where should I read Burcu’s letter? At home? On the road?
On melting staircases?
My feud with the poet wasn’t over.
This crazy woman could read this letter anywhere if left alone.
—Letters can’t be read in poems.
—They can!
—They can’t, in my opinion.
—I’ll throw a character^^^, move off this page if you don’t want it to hit.
—“All bad poets come from those who think themselves free.”
—And the guy who said that kept rambling about the trouble of being born, then died of Alzheimer’s at ninety.
—Still, letters shouldn’t be read in poems.
—They can!
—Why?
—As a hypothetical reading suggestion for my reader.
—Oh, shut up! Your reader, really? They’re reading so much, right?
She really read Burcu’s letter
with a jellyfish stuck on her cheek,
muddy seaweed tangled on her head
she leapt out of breath into the blank of a white page.
"This evening, I’ll fall asleep to the songs of Pulbiber Mahallesi^^^^. Spicy yet optimistic songs... The lack of hope hasn’t been able to stop optimism. I don’t know if there are rule- makers for what to do with poetry, but I’ll hum your poems while boarding buses, while going, while coming, when I’m most afraid, when I’m most worried, before sleep, after arrests. I’ll mix their pain^^^^^ into my meals, then eat something sweet to make myself pass out inside. And then I’ll read them again. Thank you so much...
Burcu"
On the way back, there was a fight in the neighborhood.
What are you looking at? What?
Come down, you hussy!
I’m not coming down; call the cops!
Without fear of being written as a witness I watched the fight.
I’ve been a witness since birth.
Like pus bursting from a pimple
I narrate everything abruptly.
Let people say whatever they want
Even my right shoulder angel has the right to self-determined destiny.
Sunflower seed corpses littered the ground
The women kept going on drunk with tea and fight
Crunch-snap-slut-crunch-snap-pimp-crunch-snap...
I sat on a melted staircase to listen.
Mine had strayed into prose.
For the first time, I had to think of how many centimeters my lines were.
It was too late in the night to babble foolishly about function.
Crunch-snap-let-the-neighborhood-headman——-that-unreasonable-woman-crunch-snap.
What was I trying to accomplish sitting on these melted stairs?
When I stuck my hands into my denim jacket pockets
and stared off absently,
what exactly did it do?
I was abandoned—that was certain.
Now all that was left were cats with eyes flickering like kettle’s lights.
Except that cats wouldn’t boil water,
and cats wouldn’t let people down.
Dried strings of peppers made strange sounds on the balconies.
I loved hot painful sounds, this was certain.
With red pepper skeletons around my neck
I would become a naked walking savage.
I exhaled the shadows choking my throat with every breath.
Gods breathe souls; poets breathe shadows.
See that? I needed to write it down immediately.
There was no point in shouting “Alaaaaaas” and getting busted.
Becoming someone else,
sitting on the melted stairs, someone else.
This someone else played a game of whispers with my life—
or charades.
For a long time, she had lived with suitcases,
packing, unpacking, and repacking,
verses that couldn’t fit anywhere creased in suitcases.
She should have cried while packing the things
The things being packed should have cried too.
Things cried most in poems
Old chairs creaked best in poetry
The lizard had slipped out of the fairy tale bag
That happened in my childhood
Its tail broke off too.
In accidents, I had complete faith, I was a polytheist in the face of fate.
It was poets who cried the most for things.
A ring with a story
could only be worn on the chubby finger of a poem’s line.
Poetry could bite into a grenade, savoring it like an apple.
If it were a pear,
well whatever.
A poet wouldn’t emerge from the decayed tooth cavity they had taken refuge in.
Becoming someone else,
forgetting and burning copper coffee pots on the stove,
believing that the sudden appearance of a brown moth
was an inspector sent by God.
Naphthalene in their hair roots,
warm sand in their hair roots of the poem
dandruff problems of joy will never be resolved now, not ever.
“Ice keys" melting before opening the door
Dervishes spinning faithlessly for the tourists.
Let those spin my head is spinning.
Hic (hiccuppppp)
Becoming someone else
people were suffering pain of condom-knots on their throats.
A poet playing game of whispers with my life,
injured herself opening a can.
The poet prefers Pegasus Airlines for her travels.
We launched virtual ads in poetry—
who’s going to watch anyway
the 37-inch TV in my stomach
No one gets hurt.
Let the first conspiracy against me come from someone who’s never had a conspiracy theory.
How’s that for a cheek, huh?
—Which one was it, September 11th, or maybe the 12th?
—You’re scamming me.
—I’m not scamming, sister
—I’ll report you to the cab drivers’ association! The idiot who thinks that because he reads the The Disconnected he will become a disconnected.
—Sorry sister?
—Nothing. You are scamming me.
—I’m not scamming, sister
Becoming someone else,
someone that bursts an apple by biting it during an accident.
Should the poet’s end be a tetanus with the smell of kidney beans? Never.
Inside my chest, a finger of Tarzan, Jane, Tarzan, Jane
As if I don't want to be tamed.
Never
Do I still want write pounding my knees
Never
Do I still want to write crying
Never
Did they grab the biggest slice of grief-cake
and fling it at your face
Never
Did the cat touch your teardrops
with a paw hiding its claws
Never
Were you exiled to an albino queen
in the exchange of souls and stuff
Never
Do you think “I’ll die with a broken heart”
Never
Do I want my life to end with a potato-stamp finale
Never
We will be one, NEVER.
Soon the corpses asking for directions would begin their shift at the morgue,
their work in the labor of despair.
With shiny ties, they'd compress neck wounds,
overtime going back and forth with men whose faces are daily newspapers
They gnawed at the calluses of briefcases,
while serving time in drawers, the documents sealed by corpses—
for inciting the poet to enmity and hatred.
I looked at her like a vengeful camel reeking of formaldehyde.
Red of the gunshot wound in my eyes,
at the boss of my memories, I stared one last time.
Red of the wound from a blade or piercing object.
Solid like the stone clenched in her hand.
I looked at her close, as close as the thing that hit her.
Seeking a mirror that wouldn’t fog in her breath,
I gazed at my albino queen and her sword,
brushed my fingers over the patches torn from her cape,
hiding my claws as I did.
I identified it by its mottled skin,
the belly button was
never
there.
It was closed.
As if it
had never
been.
*the unease creeping into me = a wolf falling inside me
**pouring lead is a ritual to repel evil eye
***an islamic ritual again for the ones who are under a spell, imam holds their forehead and whispers prayers.
****when you say “boş ol (be blank (empty))” three times, the marriage is completely broken.
^boundaries here aren’t about physical boundaries, it is boundaries in means of respect for the other
^^Python Pakize was a python in a Turkish zoo that escaped the zoo, she was all over the news. she was found 2 months later.
^^^throwing a character = be cross with someone
^^^^the name on the poetry book is Pulbiber Mahallesi (Red Pepper Flakes Neighborhood)