One of the aspects of the Rum community that Anastasiadou wants to highlight in the text is the community’s fear of and exclusion from mainstream Turkish society. This is rooted deep into Turkish history. Although at its founding the new Republic of Turkey was ostensibly a secular nation, it was explicitly built with a Turkish and Muslim identity at its core. This left non-Muslim minorities such...
Threshold
The threshold that divides his memory in two was a deep gap. This deep emptiness was filled with a hum. The sound of shouting. Tear gas. With nerve gas. With fog. The void was covered with the smell of burnt people. Megaphone sounds. Threats. Crumbling walls. With shattered doors. There’s never been a threshold, there’s never been one.
That’s all
By Figen Şakacı
From Keseklİ Tarla (Cloddy Field), a collection of short stories, 2020
Aysel was grumpy. She would look for defects wherever she went. Then, she would take the best seat with an air expecting deference. I would respectfully beseech her company; she would oblige me and scooch over. She didn’t like guests much. If someone laughed a lot, she...
Three poems by Seda Suna Uçakan
Travelers of musk
think the silence when you are silent!
think by tearing, splitting the tissues down
now I am still I am
deprived of your eyes, turn down
with going by the fade skin
it is the mystery of word
was that frightening wall built
by raising from the base
...
Four poems by Cihan Yurdaün
Afreet Son
soars high blistering
wings stitched with wax
melt
into liquid ache
her
arctic touch is the wind
the inevitable plunge to gin
induced reveries
the scorching sins
born, burnt and belied
in the hollow mind
of a-freed flight
pure sorcery is love
xxx
Dangling...
Two Poems by Gonca Özmen
SUPPOSE IT IS
I’m quite blurry. Suppose it’s Thames.
Suppose my mind diminishes in front of a naked woman
Suppose I’m running among llamas
Suppose my legs got longer wrapped around history
Suppose I found myself speaking a bleary language this morning
Suppose there are two swirls on red carpets I cannot choose which one to fall onto
Suppose I called you in the middle...
Sites of Consecrated Potentials
By Murat Nemet-Nejat
“THINGS ARE SITES OF CONSECRATED POTENTIALS.” — GILLES DELEUZE
“Ideas are consecrated potentials in concrete form.”
I.
Paranoia’s Infinity
Dying, I’ll not happen.
II...
I knew it as such
By İlhan Sami Çomak
From Hymns Written by Cats
The dark side of the mountains
was a color jealous of blue, I knew it as such.
Like a clumsy rock, I split the air into two
I whistled
I liken whistling to horses.
With a slice of bread whose surface gives meaning to heat
Among all kinds of smells
the breath of silence breaks the waves
at the...
Two poems by İlhan Sami Çomak
It’s for this reason
It’s for this reason I slashed my face.
By placing the resonance of a letter
in the space between us and the sun.
“Laugh!” I said to rebellion’s tired face.
“I’m reconciled with this matter, now.”
You know, like drawing a sketch and then staring,
asking, is it an apple, apricot, pear?
Saying, it’s a plum! in that tone that’s...
Two Poems by Caroline Stockford
Walk like an Ephesian
I used to hang out at the House of Love
its signage a heart in marble, a foot
for direction. Once there,
mosaics of the seasons.
I’d sit on windowsill empty of glass, house
vacant of senators. Listening
to tour guides’ musical schpiel
telling how leading lights
of this house of love
sallied forth to front
the annual...
Night Terrors
By Sevda Akyuz
almost but not quite
sounds like an apt
description of all things I
went through
under and above
in and out
up and down
but mostly down
mossy stone
by the...
Two Poems by Nilgün Marmara
Translated by Sevda Akyuz
From the Typewritten Poems
KALEIDOSCOPE SIMILE
OPTIMISTICALLY
The pain of established estrangement
Their own enemies without love or cognition
and a black phrase chained by ruthless shellfish.
A reason for a stranger?
A reason for establishment?
A reason for an established stranger...