Joseph Salvatore AversanoSee-Through Land Sea Walls The sketched wavelets in miniatures are fish's scales. Or scallops. You just have to look real close. And yet the columnist Procopius writes, “You know that this city has grown too big when a twelve-year-old born and raised in it has never seen the sea, never seen its garland of waters." As our cabby asks us how to get back to the Asian continent, the Theotokos hums "While Going to Uskudar". And the child she is holding is lulled. As they go by caique through the splashed up scalloped paint . . . the splashed up scalloped paint . . . Stylites in the Wind When the lodos wind whips through the people grow irritable. Lovers get into spats, and something feels sort of off. The ferry decks fill with cigarette smoke all the way out to the islands. And we end up having to stay inside the pub. Where it’s safe. And because of the bombs in the square. A monk ascends a column and announces he will stay up there in penitence. And the people come in droves just to see him. How the weight and scent of a Haji Shakir soap block assures me. My barber is the son of a barber who calls himself “White Beard”. And did you know? It took me about a month to realize that the nearest mosque is in my own building. And as Orhan Veli was listening with his eyes closed, he couldn’t help but notice the lodos as well. The reed flute player we meet says the instrument itself is his teacher. And I confess, I sometimes long for the wheezing jingle of the Aygaz truck. For it to make its way up past the washing. And on into the rapture, or air. Joseph Salvatore Aversano currently lives with his wife Asu in Ankara on the Central Anatolian Plateau. His poetry has been published in numerous journals including bones, Die Leere Mitte, E-ratio, is/let, and Verse-Virtual.previous page     contents     next page
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Article 20
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