It is several days before my flight to Turkey.
I am at my Aunt’s house attending my own farewell dinner.
The mash potatoes have yet to be passed when with mangled morsels of food
Still trapped in his overstuffed cheeks, he takes the liberty to ask me,
“Do they have Electricity over there?”
“How about running water?”
“Will you have to live in a cave like in the Flintstones?
“They going to make you drive a camel to the school every day?”
He bellows, mincing self-amused laughter with pieces of fried chicken,
Picturing in his mind his nephew in a robe atop a camel
Trotting along the desert. I smile across the table at him,
Reluctant to help him ruining this last family meal.
One month later on a bus to Goreme,
Three weeks into a one-year stay,
I notice on the side of the desert mountain road
A man in a fez holding up a camera.
He is aiming the camera at a young couple who are
Sitting on the hump of a rather melancholy old camel.
The two Americans audaciously smile for the picture, posing
In Gap jeans and Nike’s as if it were a photo-shoot for Vogue.
My Turkish companion watches me watching the episode
As our bus gallops past down the winding road.
She lets out a jest-coated sigh and slyly comments,
“Aptal yabancilar (Silly Foreigners).”
Discreetly delighted by my confusion from her statement,
Or possibly eager to offer me some sort of warning
Gift wrapped as a charming little cultural lesson
She explains to me that camels are not indigenous to Turkey.
“But the rich, Americans that come here for vacation, they believe
That Turkey is in the Middle East, therefore it must have camels.
So some of our men, they have camels imported here
In order to make money off of the tourists.”
The old man, the American couple, and the camel shrink into
Our periphery. I can hear my uncle chuckling, and suddenly
I find myself a nomad migrating from colonies of shame toward
A sovereignty of gratitude, an unexpected oasis beyond.
The Myth of Caves and Camels
The space where will meets is
Pockmarks congregate on the fuzzy edge of a cheek
Sisters separated at birth are reintroduced
A room repeats itself in a child’s game
Lavender scavengers gather infamy from a sealed windowpane
Numbers are exchanged like letters to the deceased
This is the space where will and is meet
Where butterflies become caterpillars become lime pillars
Where blurry creatures refurnish old traumas
This is a crossroads of sorts
A smeared boundary
A pinch on the arm
Awakening the careless seizure of property
Blind tour guides escort visitors around the premises
A cloud transmutes into the monkeys we once teased at the zoo
In the space where will and is meet
In the plazas of yearning and suspicion
A bevy of retired train conductors converge
They draw flint from our ankles
A ripened papaya is ignited
A flamingo is inspired to red
A confession is recited
The intestines of an impersonal computer are bled
A commuter pulls into a gas station
For unleaded and beef jerky
Leaves her vehicle peacefully at the pump
Jumps from the roof of a nearby library
Into a gargantuan mattress made of meringue
Where a basketball game is now going into overtime
Over time all witnesses to the accident make their way
To the space where will meets is
Ankara, 5 a.m.
The morning prayer bellows from
The minaret of the mosque on the corner.
A shirtless child patrols the street brandishing
A crown of bread on sale for today's breakfast.
Not yet awake, I drag my feet to the
Front door, pay the boy a million lira.
I return to the kitchen to find my cesve of
Coffee steaming. On the table, a pile of
Essays wait to be graded. I take my cup to
The balcony and stare out at the mosaic of homes
Zig-zagging over the desert landscape.
The sidewalk is still damp from last night's rain.
My roommate enters, stage right, strafing the
Apartment with a barrage of footsteps, the
clanging of dishes. He flicks on the radio.
The telephone interjects a redundant solo as
The morning prayer bellows from
The minaret of the mosque on the corner.
A shirtless child patrols the street brandishing
A crown of renewal on sale for today's breakfast.
Little CEO on the Prairie
Claws on the steering wheel of his Lexus
Playing with the knobs on the stereo
Ring tone on his cell phone droning endlessly
While he curses out a pedestrian
For making him late for his 10:15
Here he is king
But extract him from his manmade laboratory
Drop him off in the wilderness
Out of range from the herd
Leave him to the elements
From which he was born then quickly orphaned
And he will tremble
Squealing like a wound weasel
He will wet himself and
Pray for a predator to quickly unmake him
Watch his looking glass shatter
Before his laser altered eyes
Untitled
All that glitters
Is an act of sorcery
An invocation brought on by
An oracle with a forked tongue
This world was conquered by
Enchanters with frail hands
And scorched lips
All that glitters
Is an act of deranged seduction
A decoy
A plastic duck in an ancient pond
Bobbing along the surface
While in a Bush
Twenty yards away
A marksman hides
Takes his aim...
Altar Ego
There she is trudging up the avenue, whistling.
If anyone noticed her they’d assume she has no destination.
Her arched back emulates a hillside in her homeland.
Her trembling fingers slide along her wrinkled sundress.
There is too much skin and not enough flesh
To cushion the frailest parts of her.
Occasionally she peers over her translucent shoulder,
Convinced her name has been called out by
A friend she has not heard from in seventeen years.
Her hair thins and wavers in the polluted breeze.
.
Only her hazel eyes make their presence known,
Sunken in their sockets and swirling
Like a binary star system above a
Jagged nose that holds up a worn pair of bifocals
Dividing her nostalgia from her antipathy.
To those that pass her, wisdom is a Styrofoam cup
Discarded into the nearest sewer and
Compassion merely an obsolete toy gadget.
Chapped lips and yellow teeth shine like broken traffic lights.
No one stops to offer her pleasantries.
To this she takes no offense.
She bears no regret as she shadows each
Sidewalk ambler, retrieving childhood aspirations
They discard on their way to work.
She stuffs them in brown paper bags and ferries them
Back to her apartment on the south side of town.
Late at night when the world has gone to bed
She hangs them up on a clothesline in Arcadia.
Unfinished Homework
When they ask him why he did not do his homework he merely shrugs his shoulders
Until they force him to admit that maybe he is just too lazy.
He gives them fiction for he cannot mention the truth about his nightlife.
They would never believe small tales about evenings
Marching through Lower East Side projects like a weary soldier,
His tiny feet struggling to keep up with mother who
Clutches and tugs at his fragile arm as they search for an uncle
He often does not seem to have.
None of the faculty would want to understand the connection
Between mother taking one last drag of her Parliament
Before she drags her little boy through another nightmare
That does not end merely because he opens his eyes,
Daylight does not eradicate the memory of gutted out tenements,
A wet fog that transports the smell of urine and cigarette smoke,
The grumbles of a sniffling man approaching them for a quarter,
The corners of each floor strewn with used condoms,
Old mattresses, and telephone cords that double as tourniquets.
On Fridays they rent horror films but they never seem to scare him.
On Saturdays they rent comedies but he never seems to laugh at them.
On Sundays no film is played.
He is instead left to view the blank expression that tattoos mother’s brow.
Tomorrow she will keep him home from school
So that he will not have to hide the bruises she will give him,
One for each man that has kept her running through
Junkyards and shooting galleries to rescue them from themselves.
The day after tomorrow when the bell rings,
He will not, like his classmates,
Dive for his jacket and book-bag,
Eagerly pushing his way through the school exits.
He will stay seated at his desk,
Last row, last seat,
Praying that the world has forgotten about him.
Computations
The latitude
Of her attitude
Superceded the radius
Of his insecurity
Until the perimeter of
Unspoken desires between them
Was broken and
The width of his outstretched tentacles
Like a blind oracle
Multiplied the length of her determination
By the depth of the ocean
That washed him upon her shoreline
Creating an island of vows
To equate themselves as a
Rational number
Whole
Indivisible by one
And greater than zero
The Invisible Parade
Blood sifts through forearms and triceps
Like sand in an hourglass
An unmistakable measurement of time
Quarantine to a life less divine
Unkempt
Undisturbed by the rivers that flank our city
Uncertain the current flows without the help of currency
Resolute
Destitute
Unsure the wounds will cauterize voluntarily
A boundless institute of
Machines that manufacture natural disasters
Good citizens tell jokes copped from old paperbacks
Their laughter
A charade
They gather on the avenue hurriedly
Hoping to catch a glimpse of the invisible parade
