The penultimate installment of TiL's 2013 Poetry Series features the work of poet, translator and essayist Murat Nemet-Nejat, who was among writers who recently read and celebrated 21 years of Word Thursdays readings at Poet's House, NYC. Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Nemet-Nejat has resided in the United States since 1959. He sent us this sublime work from his home in New Jersey. It is an adaptation/translation of a Turkish poem written by Küçük İskender.
sacrifice
I bought you a lamp shade today
just the tip of my mind baltimore
or an open doored green Chevrolet,
registered a masterpiece
sacrifice is the tape you play
waywards towards the shore
all around us angelhoods, in blood
cleaning
at each other’s throats, hanging on
each others’ calls
I wrote you a letter today,
more than trivialities,
talking of roses
the anxiety of turning into a rose
can’t you remember I bitched,
wept
left and right cigarettes lit, burnt
out
each drag starts with “my love, “
no more, fragments fragments
of paper soul
rocks of cocaine bliss
a winter piece came into me
with your drip of blood within
we went
sacrificing today
my wrist still sweet and flowing
a temporal drip
a love chat not talked about
bodies abused
feisty squirrels meeting on a limb
the lips, the lips trembling
the glowworm which hits nothing and
disappears
the wonder phantasma which hit my mind
and disappeared
our love
pieces of soul and love which hit and
disappeared
the hand of the teen cutesy god which
appears and moves on my white and wet forehead
in the middle of my life the first time
I came, parisreaming of dying
oh, readjust slowly my wet forelock,
I bought you a lamp shade today, wrote
you a letter,
to you, I say... a lamp shade and
letter
for you I died today no one else
That green Chevy, open doors
in your cassette sacrifice by
Elton, Elton John
on my palm a pink alliance ring
fragments, of fog and bliss which hit
and disappear,
yours and mine collected we anted
into time
and you and I thinking we are a mere
thing
fretting on the fact
like a feather, approaching you
like a feather touching and startling
you
then
then ebbing away…
k. Iskender
translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat
***
Murat Nemet-Nejat is the author of The Peripheral Space of Photography (Green Integer Press, 2004), the memoir/essay “Istanbul Noir” in Istanbul: Metamorphoses In an Imperial City (Talisman Press, 2011), and the poem "The Spiritual Life of Replicants" (Talisman House, 2011). Poet, translator and essayist, Nemet-Nejat also edited and largely translated Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry (Talisman House, 2004), translated Orhan Veli, I, Orhan Veli (Hanging Loose Press, 1989), Ece Ayhan, A Blind Cat Black and Orthodoxies (Sun and Moon Press, 1997), and Seyhan Erözçelik, Rosestrikes and Coffee Grinds (Talisman House, 2010). Ece Ayhan’s A Blind Cat Black and Orthodoxies will be republished by Green Integer Press in 2013. His translation of Birhan Keskin’s poem "Y’ol" will be published by The Imprint Press in 2013.
***
Murat Nemet-Nejat is the author of The Peripheral Space of Photography (Green Integer Press, 2004), the memoir/essay “Istanbul Noir” in Istanbul: Metamorphoses In an Imperial City (Talisman Press, 2011), and the poem "The Spiritual Life of Replicants" (Talisman House, 2011). Poet, translator and essayist, Nemet-Nejat also edited and largely translated Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry (Talisman House, 2004), translated Orhan Veli, I, Orhan Veli (Hanging Loose Press, 1989), Ece Ayhan, A Blind Cat Black and Orthodoxies (Sun and Moon Press, 1997), and Seyhan Erözçelik, Rosestrikes and Coffee Grinds (Talisman House, 2010). Ece Ayhan’s A Blind Cat Black and Orthodoxies will be republished by Green Integer Press in 2013. His translation of Birhan Keskin’s poem "Y’ol" will be published by The Imprint Press in 2013.
0 comments:
Post a Comment