“The Wind of the World” & other poems by Müesser Yeniay

The Wind of the World For my grandmother you are under the earth I am on the earth with your body that is tired of carrying the wind of this world -a stone in the middle of my heart has been rolling without stop- I don't know where you have gone the only thing which is clear is that you are not here The Phenomenology of Writing Now you are an empty page inviting writing –maybe- because of lust just not ready -your call is on my mind for quite a while- call me call me the flow of ink is a remedy for my wounds Illness You hit me like you were punching the wall woman isn't your cave in which whenever you like you can lie down you can't climb over her like a squirrel. not of his nectar but of his pee he lets inside he loves like he shakes a tree manhood is a serious illness Rajm Outside is night inside is separation this must be the last day of the world -I think of him- love ends (…) the heart remains as a woman who was stoned to death in the middle of reality my heart is the biggest stone that God threw at me 'The Wind Of The World' & other poems are © Müesser Yeniay, translated into english by Müesser Yeniay MÜESSER YENİAY was born in İzmir, 1984; she graduated from Ege University, with a degree in English Language and Literature. She took her M.A on Turkish Literature at Bilkent University. She has won several prizes in Turkey including Yunus Emre (2006), Homeros Attila İlhan (2007), Ali Riza Ertan (2009), Enver Gökçe (2013) poetry prizes. She was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Muse Pie Press in USA. Her first book Darkness Also Falls Ground was published in 2009 and her second book I Founded My Home in the Mountains a collection of translation from world poetry. Her second poetry book I Drew the Sky Again was published in 2011. She has translated the poems of Persian poet Behruz Kia as Requiem to Tulips. She has translated the Selected Poems of Gerard Augustin together with Eray Canberk, Başak Aydınalp, Metin Cengiz (2011). She has also translated the Personal Anthology of Michel Cassir together with Eray Canberk and Metin Cengiz (2011). Lately, she has published a Contemporary Spanish Anthology with Metin Cengiz and Jaime B. Rosa. She also translated the poetry of Israeli poet Ronny Someck (2014) and Hungarian poet Attila F. Balazs (2015). She has published a book on modern Turkish Avant-garde poetry The Other Consciousness: Surrealism and The Second New (2013). Her latest poetry book Before Me There Were Deserts was published in 2014 in İstanbul. Her poems were published in Hungarian by AB-Art Press by the name A Rozsaszedes Szertartasa (2015). Her poems have appeared in the following magazines abroad: Actualitatea Literară (Romania), The Voices Project, The Bakery, Sentinel Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Shot Glass Journal, Poesy, Shampoo, Los Angeles Review of Books, Apalachee Review (USA&England); Kritya, Shaikshik Dakhal (India); Casa Della Poesia, Libere Luci, I poeti di Europe in Versi e il lago di Como (Italy); Poeticanet, Poiein (Greece); Revue Ayna, Souffle, L’oiseau de feu du Garlaban (France); Al Doha (Qatar); Tema (Croatia); Dargah (Persia). The Anthologies her poetry appeared: With Our Eyes Wide Open; Aspiring to Inspire, 2014 Women Writers Anthology; 2014 Poetry Anthology- Words of Fire and Ice (USA) Poesia Contemporanea de la Republica de Turquie (Spain); Voix Vives de Mediterranee en Mediterranee, Anthologie Sete 2013 ve Poetique Insurrection 2015 (France); One Yet Many- The Cadence of Diversity ve ayrıca Shaikshik Dakhal (India); Come Cerchi Sull’acqua (Italy). Her poems have been translated into Vietnamese, Hungarian, Croatian, English, Persian, French, Serbian, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, Greek, Hindi, Spanish and Romanian. Her book in Hungarian was published in 2015 by AB-Art Publishing by the name “A Rozsaszedes Szertartasa” She has participated in the poetry festivals like Sarajevo International Poetry Festival, September 2010 (Bosnia-Herzegovina); Nisan International Poetry Festival, May 2011 (Israel); Belgrad International Poetry Festival, September 2012 (Serbia); Voix Vives International Poetry Festival (Sete), July 2013 (France); Kritya International Poetry Festival, September 2013 (India), Galati/Antares International Poetry Festival, June 2014 (Romania), Medellin International Poetry Festival, July 2014 (Colombia); 2nd Asia Pacific Poetry Festival 2015 (Vietnam). Müesser is the editor of the literature magazine Şiirden (of Poetry). She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Turkish literature at Bilkent University, Ankara, and is also a member of PEN and the Writers Syndicate of Turkey. Three Poems by Müesser Yeniay An Index of Women Poets

Poems from “Off Duty” by Katie Donovan

Wedding   “Hasty,” the judge mocked until he read the letter from the consultant, his jaded face changing to pity. We got the green light then, to marry in a hurry.   We turned up in our jeans and limped through the ceremony – upsetting the officiating lady, determined to make this a special occasion.   Outside the registry office we inked a shadow on the next couple: the bride, glowing in her plumage, her robust young groom, their flower girls fidgeting.   My brother and his wife had used their lunch hour to be our witnesses. They went back to work, and my new spouse rode off on his bike: the big triumph that, with six months to live, he could still cycle.   I had to collect our children – the paltry nuptials would have been disappointing – no frocks, no fun – just this boring signing thing, and so I kept it secret, left them with Gran.   I sloped off to the train. It was bright, a May day, and I was forty-seven – finally, improbably a married woman.   Wedding is © Katie Donovan first published in the November 2015 issue of Cyphers Magazine, edited by Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, Macdara Woods and Leland Bardwell   Operation   In the hospital, gowned in gauzy cloth, he is prepped; his limbs so thin, his head bursting with the tumour, with knowing that wrestling the thing out may kill him.   All day the cutters and stitchers are at work, slicing from lip to clavicle, sawing bone, careful not to snick an artery, gouging a flap from his thigh, to patch the gap where the tumour hid thriving in its secret lair.   When it’s out – and they have fixed the jaw with a steel plate; rivetted the long L-shape of the wound – he lies arrayed with tubes and drains. He floats in the shallows of the anaesthetic, his breath echoing eerily from the hole in his throat, his face utterly still.   The night before the operation he read “Peter Pan” to our children, and in the morning he surrendered; waving from the trolley, as if to clutch a last particle of the life we figured for him, as if to let it fall.   Operation is © Katie Donovan first published in Irish Pages, The Heaney Issue, 2014, Vol. 8, No.2, edited by Chris Morash and Cathal O Searcaigh   Off Duty   Is my face just right, am I looking as a widow should? I pass the funeral parlour where four weeks ago the ceremony unfurled. Now I’m laughing with the children. The director of the solemn place is lolling out front, sucking on a cigarette. We exchange hellos, and I blush, remembering how I still haven’t paid the bill, how I nearly left that day with someone else’s flowers.   Off Duty is © Katie Donovan first published in The Irish Times, 2014, by Poetry Editor Gerry Smyth

Katie Donovan has published four books of poetry, all with Bloodaxe Books, UK. Her first, Watermelon Man appeared in 1993. Her second, Entering the Mare, was published in 1997; and her third, Day of the Dead, in 2002. Her most recent book, Rootling: New and Selected Poems appeared in 2010. Katie Donovan’s fifth collection of poetry, Off Duty will be published by Bloodaxe Books in September 2016. She is currently working on a novel for children. She is co-editor, with Brendan Kennelly and A. Norman Jeffares, of the anthology, Ireland’s Women: Writings Past and Present (Gill and Macmillan, Ireland; Kyle Cathie, UK, 1994; Norton & Norton, US, 1996). She is the author of Irish Women Writers: Marginalised by Whom? (Raven Arts Press, 1988, 1991). With Brendan Kennelly she is the co-editor of Dublines (Bloodaxe, 1996), an anthology of writings about Dublin. Her poems have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies in Ireland, the UK and the US. She has given readings of her work in many venues in Ireland, England, Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, the US and Canada. She has read her work on RTÉ Radio One and on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3. Her short fiction has appeared in The Sunday Tribune and The Cork Literary Review.   Entering The Mare and other Poems by Katie Donovan

‘Cleaving a Puzzle-Tree’ and other poems by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Cleaving a Puzzle-Tree   1.   I didn’t see my grandmother’s tree in Chile, araucaria araucana, though they grow tall there and are many. I must have walked under them every day, tripped over their seeds, but I didn’t think of her, oceans away, standing in a square of green, raking leaves around her monkey puzzle tree.   2.   For over a hundred years, that tree stood between pruned rosebush and clipped hedge, a long shadow moving over wet fields and stone walls. As a girl, I clung to the trunk when we played hide and seek, rough bark printing maps on my palms.   3.   In April gales, the tree sways. From the window, my grandmother watches a chainsaw blade spin the tree into a flight of splinters, until only logs and sawdust are left. In each neat wheel of wood, an eye opens, ringed by lines of the past. The logs are split, stacked, the tree turned into armfuls of firewood which will rise as smoke to the sky, a puzzle unravelled.   Frozen Food   In the frozen foods aisle, I think of him when I shiver among shelves of green flecked garlic breads and chunks of frozen fish. I touch the cold door until my thumbs numb.   Strangers unpacked his body in a lab and thawed his hand, watched long-frozen fingers unfurl one by one, until his fist finally opened, let go, and from his grasp rolled a single sloe, ice-black with a purple-blue waxy bloom.   Inside the sloe, a blackthorn stone. Inside the stone, a seed.   Standing in the supermarket aisle, I watch my breath freeze.   Museum   I am custodian of this exhibition of erasures, curator of loss. I watch over pages of scribbles, deletions, obliterations, in a museum that preserves not what is left, but what is lost.   Where arteries are unblocked, I keep the missing clots. I collect all the lasered tattoos that let skin start again. In this exhibition of erasures, I am curator of loss.   See the unraveled wool that was once a soldier’s socks, shredded documents, untied shoestring knots — my museum protects not what is left, but what is lost.   I keep deleted jpegs of strangers with eyes crossed, and the circle of pale skin where you removed your wedding ring. I recall all the names you ever forgot. I am curator of loss.   Here, the forgotten need for the flint and steel of a tinderbox, and there, a barber’s pile of scissored hair. I attend not what is left, but what is lost.   I keep shrapnel pulled from wounds where children were shot, confession sins, abortions, wildflowers lost in cement. I am custodian of erasures. I am curator of loss in this museum that protects not what is left, but what is lost.   ‘Cleaving a Puzzle-Tree’, ‘Museum’ and ‘Frozen Food’ are © Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Doireann Ní Ghríofa is an award-winning bilingual poet, writing both in Irish and in English. Paula Meehan awarded her the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary 2014-2015. Her collections are Résheoid, Dúlasair (Coiscéim), A Hummingbird, your Heart (Smithereens Press) and Clasp (Dedalus Press). Her work is regularly broadcast on RTE Radio One. Doireann’s poems have previously appeared in literary journals in Ireland and internationally (in Canada, France, Mexico, USA, Scotland and England). Two of her poems are currently Pushcart Prize nominated. . www.doireannnighriofa.com & DoireannNiG

‘Fable’ and ‘Oh Cherry Trees You are Too White For My Heart’ by Doris Lessing

Poethead

Fable When I look back I seem to remember singing. Yet it was always silent in that long warm room. Impenetrable, those walls, we thought, Dark with ancient shields.The light Shone on the head of a girl or young limbs Spread carelessly. And the low voices Rose in the silence and were lost as in water. Yet, for all it was quiet and warm as a hand, If one of us drew the curtains A threaded rain blew carelessly outside. Sometimes a wind crept, swaying the flames, And set shadows crouching on the walls, Or a wolf howled in the wide night outside, And feeling our flesh chilled we drew together. But for a while the dance went on – That is how it seems to me now: Slow forms moving calm through Pools of light like gold net on the floor. It might have gone on, dream-like, for ever.

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‘The House of Altogether Nothing’ & Other poems by Jan Sand

The House of Altogether Nothing The countryside in which it stands Is broken with large jagged rocks. Its trees are dark, from northern lands, Whose branches scratch the sky; boney bough knocks One against the other. Cold winds finger through Odd strands of captured human hair, Torn newspaper strips look as if they grew Amongst the leaves to bleakly declare Of violence and despair. Black groves smell Of damp decay. They display white fungoid growth Through which black insects grope, explore a shell Deserted by a snail that caps its glowing trail. One is loathe To venture near this place of threats But winding through dead leaves, broken rubble Is the path where stumble those, full of regrets, Replete with fears, burdened with trouble, Pass to reach the house. Its peaks and walls Assault the sky like a cataclysmic scream, Intertwined grotesqueries that captures and enthralls Those destined to drop into its dream. The weary travelers approach in single file, one by one, Trudge to the door which swings open wide. They know their journey’s almost done. They tremulously step inside. Halfway down the long bare hall Their head is seen to wobble, shake. Comes now a groan, a gasp. Then the fall. It thumps and rolls. The arms quake And drop as well. The torso tumbles, Then the legs topple like loose lumber. The parts now chute in sliding jumbles Through a hole in the floor. Nothing left to encumber The next traveler. The house re-opens its front door. The upper stories flicker, luminesce. Moonlight glistens. Something rises to soar From out a square chimney – glaucus, incandesce To dissipate like spectral steam. Something wakens from a dream. The House of Altogether Nothing is © Jan Sand

These images are © Jan Sand

Rains There are rains that drag fog skirts Across the country-side in stealthy hiss, That, gently, in determination Dampens down the grass with sodden kiss Of sky to earth as caring as a mother Calms her resting child. There are rains of panicked horses’ hooves That illuminate their stampede With angry lightning flashing on black roofs While trees sway and shudder in dismay And water demons pound on window panes. But some rains come and merely sit And drum in steady patient siege, Work soft hammers on the dents and wrinkles of the day Smoothing anger and distress to flat peace, Tempt shy dreams to peek from hidden thoughts And welcome in safe surrender to sleep’s release Rains is © Jan Sand

2 Am The early black Is still unstirred By yawning morning. The ceiling fills With predatory thoughts, Like quiet children Come to play Their silent games, Poking sticks into Dark passages Of forgotten memories; Memories like frightened mice That scurry off in panic. The sadly moaning bell Sixty years ago on a lonely buoy Shrugging its shoulders In a choppy sea. A special purple Strangely found on both An apron and a stub of clay In kindergarten. The round eyed stare Frozen to my mother’s face As cancer pain Prodded her to certain death. A pet white rat curled in snooze On my pillow by my cheek. The falling crescent moon Smiles in my window Like my long gone mother Soothing me Back to the peace of sleep. 2 am is © Jan Sand

Jan Sand is originally a New Yorker. Currently a resident of Helsinki, Finland. Having read and enjoyed his poetry at Open Salon, I requested some work for Poethead. Bio: I am a former industrial designer formerly a New Yorker, now retired and living in Helsinki, Finland. I have been writing poetry for several decades but am more or less unpublished except at a couple of web sites run by acquaintances met on the web. I know no other poets but take up my time with graphics and poetry and innovative cooking and baking and learning Finnish and relating to the wild animals in my area.   Jan Sand Graphics Gallery Jan Sand On Poemhunter