Three Poems by Gonca Özmen Translated by Jeffrey Kahrs and Mete Özels

Crack 
 
Let us be fog horns on a murky night
Let them call us flawed, bitchy
Let them say you have a tail
Let mystified children keep looking for it
Let them be blind to the glittering trail we left behind
Let them be oblivious to you hiding in my mouth
Let it be impossible to adore your feet in public
Let them believe this crack in life is our fault
Let our blood gently touch their beds
Let us wish them a large meadow
Let us say one day it may not come true
Let my darkness enter your darkness
Let two women blow themselves up at the same time
Let them suddenly fall over like two trees on a road
Let us collide like two buses covered with their love
Let the fire in you forge the mountain in me









Çatlak
 
Varsın gecede birer sis çanı olalım 
Varsın eksik desinler bize, huysuz desinler
Varsın kuyruğunuz var desinler
Varsın arayalım o kuyruğu çocukken telaşla
Varsın ardımızda bıraktığımız ışıltılı çizgiyi görmesin onlar
Varsın ağzımda sakladığımı seni bilmesinler
Varsın uluorta sevemiyor olayım ayaklarını
Varsın bizden bilsinler ömrün çatlağını 
Varsın kanımız usul değsin onların yataklarına 
Varsın uzun çayırlar dileyelim ikimizden
Varsın uzun çayırlar olmadı diyelim bir gün
Varsın karalığım bulaşsın karalığına
Varsın iki kadın patlatsın gövdesini aynı anda
Varsın iki ağaç devrilelim apansız yol ortasına
Varsın iki otobüs çarpışalım onların aşklarında
Varsın sendeki har bendeki dağı dövsün   

Let’s Assume

I am cloudy like the Thames
Let’s assume my mind is fading in front of a naked woman
Let’s assume I'm running among llamas
Let’s assume my legs have become long enough to wrap around history
Let’s assume this morning I found myself speaking a language full of burrs
As if there are two gyres on a red carpet
And I can't choose the best one to fall into
Let’s assume I call in the middle of the night
should we suffer from withdrawal even more?
should we become even more cowardly?
As if everybody suddenly becomes a stranger
And this poem arrives in the guise of an owl.

All day long I've been trying to turn my dirty words into a neutered piece of formal speech  
I’m not exaggerating 
I grow long in the tooth because of loneliness
I’m not exaggerating
If I'm hanging on to a wrinkled feeling
A girl with pink nail polish sticks her hands inside me

Let’s assume it’s true that the storks brought me
to the edge of the world
Let’s assume I made love to twenty of them
Then left that world behind
Stretching and yawning
A road has a right to a crossroads
Let’s assume Ada walked from the bottom of a picture
into her own enchanted scent
Let’s assume I sold myself to the abyss for three cents
Let’s assume a bird skipped across my shoulder
Let’s assume I skipped a stone across my distractions  
And lit matches to honor your absence
Let’s assume she walked with me for the first time to eternity

I’ve written poems for her that suck on lollypops for the first time
We become more and more luminous
As their voices chirp and warble
A weathervane endlessly spins in our mouths
A zebra jumped out of me
While I look from a plane at night at Istanbul
Growing larger and larger as we descend








Say ki 

Bulanığım hayli. Say ki Thames. 
Say ki çıplak bir kadının önünde azalıyor aklım 
Say ki koşuyorum lamaların arasında 
Say ki gitgide uzadı bacaklarım tarihe dolanmaya  
Say ki çapaklı bir dilde konuşur buldum kendimi bu sabah  
Say ki kırmızı halıların üzerinde iki sarmal 
hangisine düşsem seçemediğim 
Say ki aradım seni bir gecenin ortası     
daha da yoksunlaşalım mı dedim
daha da korkaklaşalım mı 
Say ki herkesler ötekiler oldu birden
Baykuş kılığında geldi bu şiir de  

Donu düşük bir sözcüğün 
Donunu kaldırmaya uğraştım gün boyu
Pembe ojeli kız ellerini içime soktu  
Abartmıyorum 
Yalnızlıktan bir dişim daha çıktı 
Abartmıyorum 
Say ki fırfırlı bir duyguda asılı kaldım   

Say ki sahiden beni beni sahiden leylekler getirdi 
dünyanın bu ucuna  
Say ki yirmisiyle de seviştim arka arkaya 
Her şey arkada kaldı 
inleyerek ve gerinerek  
Bir yolun da karşıdan karşıya geçme hakkı vardı 
Say ki dibini boylamış bir resimden yürüdü Ada 
sadece onun olan efsunlu kokusuna 
Say ki üç kuruşa sattım kendimi o uçuruma 

Say ki omzuna bir kuş, dalgınlığına bir taş sektirmişim  
yokluğuna kibritler 
Say ki biri ilk defa yürümüş benimle yan yana sonsuza   
Ben ona horoz şekeri emen şiirler yazmışım ilk defa 
Işıklı bir şeylere benzemişiz giderek 
cıvıltılı bir şeylere 
Bir rüzgârgülü sonsuz dönmüş ağzımızda 
Bir zebra fırlamış benden 
İstanbul’a gece uçaktan bakmak gibi olmuşum 
alçaldıkça büyüyen büyüyen

Patch
 
Gamze has never been split down the middle
Never toppled over on either side
Who knows what will be matched with what
And who is mother to whom and who will act
As a patch to protect whose womanly nature
With faithful palms Gamze offers water to sparrows 

Stay longer stay more
Who will wake whom after sweat and dreams
She airs winter clothes on her summer balcony
She looks away from herself if she looks away
calling the wounded person behind the rose

I think it’s a mountain while she thinks it’s a plain
If I speak with rage then suddenly
There is a mass of canaries in her throat
My hair is like frost on a field 
While hers is just a gray strand or two
 
I wish Gamze had left me on the wet neck of a colt








Yama 

Gamze ortasından hiç yarılmamış daha 
Devrilmemiş iki yana iki parça 
Neleri nelere yakıştırmış kim bilir 
Hem kim kime anne, kim kimin kadınlığına yama 
Serçelere su içiriyor Gamze avuçlarında vefa 

Kal daha, daha kal 
Kim kimi uyandıracak bu terli rüyada 
Kışlıkları havalandırıyor o erken balkonunda 
Uzağa baksa, bir baksa kendinden uzağa 
Çağıracak bir yaralıyı gülün ardına 

Benim aklımda bir dağsa onunkinde ova 
Benim sesimde öfkeyse birdenbire 
Onunkinde çokça kanarya 
Benim saçlarımdaki bitimsiz ayaz 
Bir kırık beyaz onda 

Gamze beni bir tayın ıslak boynuna bıraksa 

Gonca Özmen was born in Burdur, Tefenni in 1982. She graduated from the Department of English Language and Literature at Istanbul University in 2004. She received her MA degree in 2008, and PhD degree in 2016 from the same department. In 1997, her first poem was published in the literary journal Varlık, and she was named ‘a poet to watch in the future’ at The Yaşar Nabi Nayır Youth Prizes. Her first poetry book Kuytumda [In My Nook] was published in 2000. Then came Belki Sessiz [Silent Perhaps] in 2008, and Bile İsteye [Knowingly, Willingly] in 2019. Her poems have been translated into English, German, French, Spanish, Slovenian, Italian, Dutch, Romanian, Persian, Greek, Hebrew and Macedonian. The Sea Within (Selected Poems) was published by Shearsman Books in 2011, and her second book Vielleicht Lautlos was published by Elif Verlag in 2017. Her third poetry collection was published by LAG in Macedonian in 2023. Having participated in international poetry readings in various countries abroad, Özmen has recieved numerous poetry awards. She edited Çağdaş İrlanda Şiiri Seçkisi [A Selection of Contemporary Irish Poetry] (Edisam, 2010) and İlhan Berk’s Çiğnenmiş Gül [Trampled Rose] (Yapı Kredi, 2011), a collection of unpublished poems of the poet after his death. She sat on the editorial board of a literary translation magazine Ç.N. [Translator’s Note], and the literary magazines Pulbiber [Chilli Flakes] and Çevrimdışı Istanbul [Offline Istanbul]. She translated five children’s books, Small in the City by Sydney Smith (Kırmızı Kedi, February 2020), The It-Doesn’t-Matter-Suit and Other Stories by Sylvia Plath (Kırmızı Kedi, September 2020), I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott (Kırmızı Kedi, March 2021), Flibbertigibbety Words: Young Shakespeare Chases Inspiration by Donna Guthrie  (Kırmızı Kedi, May 2021), and Town Is by the Sea by Joanne Schwartz (Kırmızı Kedi, 2022). She was one of the members of the advisory board of Bursa Nilüfer International Poetry Festival, Three Seas Writers’ and Translators’ Council (TSWTC) based in Rhodes, Greece, and the magazine, Turkish Poetry Today, which was published annually by Red Hand Books, in England. She is currently editing the Turkish poet küçük İskender’s complete work for Can Publishing, and translating the Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath. She has lived in Istanbul since 2000.

Jeffrey Kahrs is the author of One Hook at a Time: A History of the Deep Sea Fishermen’s Union of the Pacific (Deep Sea Fishermen’s Union, (2015) and a chapbook from Gold Wake Press (2010). A winner of the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize (2012), he co-edited an issue of the Atlanta Review on poetry in Turkey (Spring/Summer 2006, Volume XII, Issue Number 2), and a section of the Turkish translation magazine Çevirmenin Notu on English-language poets in Istanbul (2011). His poetry, fiction, essays and book reviews have been published in numerous journals, and he has been translated into four languages. Mr. Kahrs lived in Istanbul for 18 years. Recently his translations from Turkish have been published in Asymptote and Circumfrence. Mr. Kahrs has a special relationship to Los Angeles. His grandfather is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery in Long Beach, and his mother went to Hollywood High. 

Mete Özel’s first book of poems Ilgım Düş Esrar was published in 2008. Since 2014 he worked on Anatolian oral traditions as a researcher and storyteller. Well-known Turkish journals, such as Varlık, Yasakmeyve, Sözcükler and Virüs, have accepted his work, and he is an accomplished critic and translator, having published essays about Elitis, Pavese, Cavalcanti, and Goethe and Metin Altıok. Carlos Felipe Moisés, Artem Harutyunyan, Rutger Kopland, Michele Zaffarano, Miron Bialoszevski, Yip Fai, Yelena Şvarts, Donnie Smith, and Elena Liliana Popescu are a few of the poets he has translated into Turkish. 

27 November 2024