At the İnceoğlu Bakery
Author | Carl Boon
We agreed on the tea, disagreed
on İlhan Berk and İnci Asena.
A boy in a high chair cried because
confined boys cry when the light
hits their faces, when the books
their parents read transport them
to other parents, other cities
where toddlers roam luna parks
for French fries, ice cream, solos
on Spanish guitars. I asked her
what she thought of emptiness,
Müharrem İnce, certain brothers
in Istanbul whose offices are filled
with posters of the broken-hearted.
She stirred her tea and looked away.
There’s a place I sit in Izmir
where nobody sees me but her,
where I let myself go, my ambition
to be better, my shoes and memories
of ferryboats. I sit there and watch
everything fall, as everything should:
the children from their bicycles
and their mothers into disregarded
places; I sit and watch the weather
turn against us all and think:
I should’ve asked her why she carries
a picture of the father she’s forgotten.
What notions solitude brings,
what happens when she crawls
across her sheets and sleep won’t come.
About the Author | Carl Boon lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at 9 Eylül University. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Posit, The Maine Review, and Diagram. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Boon recently edited a volume on the sublime in American cultural studies.