Parks and Flowers

by Zeliha Cenkci, translated by Zeynep Senahan Yıldız

さいとう/ saitousai

I.

pouring sleeping pills one by one sleeping pills inside the tomato soup one by one grater and blender. No. Parks and flowers my stomach was empty now getting full

the things I go through not at once realizing not at once realizing I see the moon is full not at once realizing suddenly where i am my hairs have grown my mustache’s come out my butt’s bigger at once I’m ugly and at once pretty not at once realizing parks and flowers

I’m aghast how a language unknown to one could imprison them I get around wallowing myself in an engineering marvel of a sentence painkillers antidepressants lovebirds violets spearmints laundry lines a missing sock a sly neighbor a block smelling like broiled food kids shrieking Kurds moved in the land next door what an awful year is 1990

II.

a man’s snoring next door in another a laundry worker is watching the fascists in the neighborhood there are weddings drums mevlüts there is pilaf with chicken lentil soup baklawa another day with no blood and no pings how nice I’m swayed towards my weariness with hispanic breezes I cough and wallow and groan at every violin I hear I cramp petrified wondering who I was I cramp petrified it’s only earthly nature a beggar who knows no future

III.

sleeping pills I say sleeping pills. They don’t heal me I pour ashes to my bed maybe sometimes attempting to burn get my feet numb I’m hurt head over heels in Diyarbakır I say I’m poor to a Venezuelan says I’m poorer. To the prostitutes heartbroken I say I drink to a Ugandan gives me waregi in a worn out cup. The Earth rotates I married out of love in Kyrgyzstan the woman says the sheep are slaughtered tents pitched cauldrons of food cooked among lofty jobs we are in journalism though our corpses are front page in newspapers of Mexico all shapes and sizes of blood covers the dreadful magazines oh this pain which one is this Turkey’s arabesque again I miss the let this world sink down the morning coffee shop the country of the march the september the july coups

IV.

I pour the sleeping pills into my soup if I were to attempt telling my life here all that it is flowers parks some politics I’m miss Zeliha how I am is like a sunset cheering and immediate I’m once again born to a third afraid of waking myself up hiding the snotty napkins reaching for my blue feathered slippers laundry to be hanged neighbors to get along well everybody to love everybody to revere my feelings are hurt I can’t

I pack everything to a suitcase to the full every city every nation every pain and history another woman to another suitcase another woman to another and all of a sudden that’s it nothing happens. Not even the police come. My hairs keep on growing it’s all just a tranquil trip to Cibeles

V.

I’m the strange world how am i today I’m ignorant hoaxed into my own color

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Zeliha Cenkci is an award-winning poet from Turkey. During her bachelor’s education in Bogazici University Department of Philosophy, she worked as a journalist, editor, and translator in various publishing houses and media organizations. Besides her poems, her critical reviews and interviews with poets were published in entrenched literary magazines of Turkey. Her first poetry collection, Rooms and Cities (Odalar ve Şehir), was awarded by the Arkadaş Z. Özger Poetry Awards and published in 2018. She is currently preparing her second poetry book and exploring the world.