Nafia Akdeniz, Cyprus
Por: Nafia Akdeniz
of inter-poetic course
for Marilena
squatting-
my period blood dropping on the soft soil
my pee splashing on my feet, sea salt drying
yellowish heat and Marilena, not met yet.
green bottle flies flying, my hands stink fish
around me shit, endemic plants my nose dreams
water, a blue-green purple pulling my hangover hair
the folds of my body smoked, sour and sandy
stretching from my rib to my reek loving ex-lover
a woman, “you too can pull my hair, don’t hold my head
when your taste is stuck into my gullet”, a man
should interfere with this poem, another man—anyway.
(we have met)
sticking out a breast of mine of my undershirt, I crash
the nipples of your poems Marilena, looking for the one
asking for the other breast, body is memory:
no half-self remains indifferent* —
I’m breaking the women besieging your lullabies
till their parts grown old like fresh bean sprouts
out of inter-poetic course, that’s romance,
around your head keep him spinning from tail*
a falling leaf to you is a haiku falling to me:
what fits tenon
fully into mortise
is under skin.
* a line from Marilena Zackheos’ poem ‘Venus de Milo’
* a reference to Wordsworth in Marilena Zackheos’ poem ‘I Tried to Write a Nature Poem’
Hand and Genius
To Beethoven for the 9. times
Hand has risen.
Percussion to my face
Strings to my feet,
Clarinets my hands
Beat!
Conductor! Keyboard is a bird,
A mourning dove.
One dove, one and lonely
That it is.
excess memory
close to tears, hard palates
Dante is right -
arms like a sharpened tooth now
dividing excess.
abstracted mind, distant mountains
bursting course of water, skirt memory
memory hair, fellow broom.
spider in the path
netting no cardigan, curtain instead
for my home with no shutters, home -
where?
Haikus - autotomy
I.
then we met,
his shell to my palm
the sea into me.
II.
together -
we drank the rain
nursed the lark
III.
the sky and the sea
inseparable that morning,
separated us from stone to dust.
IV.
to the crack on the wall
I say your name,
hear it from the sea shell.
V.
torn apart -
carnivores flocked
to our remote corners.
VI.
to the sound of your steps
the lizard I am
shedding my tail.
VII.
The God of Fall:
waiting for you to spring
on its branch the last leaf.
Haikus – war-zone
I.
planted in a pot
of displaced people
the trees.
II.
a starving child—
displaced in a rusty pot
boils mallow.
III.
Garden of Cyprus:
of domestic daffodils
the looted bulbs.
IV.
lost lashes to an eye
suffer the wind the same
to home of no human.
V.
the gathered dust
to the roof flowers,
is the earth fertile.
panting breath
entered into my waters:
swimming parallel to the waves of my skirt
on a back of a dolphin getting closer, through
my narrowing circles, he jumps jumps.
disguised myself:
I am waiting for him to go by.
– shall not show you are scared of love sharpening –
I pretend dead on the one hand,
I want him soon to catch my breath panting on the other.
Of that pond
I am impregnated
of that pond
that pond in the forest,
will pass a kidney stone
hope stone hope stone
The road dragging its feet -
A wounded deer
drank water from that pond
in need of return.
Hop on and come along!
Of that pond...
delivering the dead
once more she opens her caesarean wound
with her father’s penknife he boned meat to eat.
she sits naked on grandmother’s sofa
eyes closed she touches her cut
with wise and feminine fingers
from belly she divides life apart.
delivering the dead stinks moldy mouth
rotten water she vomits into her palms
she dries with her hair standing up
holding her split belly she wakes up.
once more she stitches her caesarean wound
with her mother’s thimble on her middle finger.
She was born in Nicosia, Cyprus. She studied English Literature and Humanities at the Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus. She published her first collection of poetry Yok/Absence in 2013 (second edition, 2016). Her poems have been translated into English, Greek, German and Persian.
She has been working as a senior instructor of English at the Eastern Mediterranean University since 2000. She holds a PhD degree in Communication and Media Studies from the Eastern Mediterranean University, 2021. Among her research interests are narrative discourse, literary communication, peace communication, contemporary ethnographies, place attachment and creative writing.
Published at 5.08.2021
