3:AM Magazine

By Krystalli Glyniadakis.

Ode to a coffee shop girl

Sweet chocolate         girl
                    k
s p     r   n         l
            i               e d
hair   wrinkles on your forehead.
blonde

You bloom           in
my mouth                   begonias
                froth
        on the windowsill. Kill-

ing time
in your coffeeshop
is               exquisite
        torture.
                                              your
                                              fingers –
        taste
        warm
        bread
        coffee
        beans
        just.
                      (roasted)
my voice
                      caught in
                                              my throat –

                                              inside of me.

I moan of cappuccinos.

 

Yeni Camıı Meydanı

Behind the Egyptian Bazaar,
the incessant chattering of birds.
Loquacious lapwings
opinionated blackbirds
amorous peacocks with their elephant-like calls
a solemn bearded warbler.
Birds flap and flap their wings
their noises fly out at me and I shield
my face with my hands
thinking their wings or their voices
or some other part of them is going to strike me
even if they are caged.

And then the cats. The cats!
Persian, Siamese, Angora, Van
skinhead skinny or opulently coated
a gold mine of purebreeds behind rusted bars;
dozens of little pink mouths meowing
yellow and blue and green eyes blinking,
turning, like fishes in a bowl;
a furry harem.

The sky protests.
Droplets of rain start falling
the entrance to the dark bazaar looms large;
my plastic crepe soles creek under my weight
when I step on its squashy straw floor.
The smell of spices burns my throat
like an extra-strong eucalyptus lozenge.
But it doesnʼt clear the reek.
The smell of sweat prevails
the smell of meat and life and life caged and life about to end
like I have walked into a butcherʼs shop.
Iʼm squeezed between the bodies and the pens,
the carpets and the voices of the vendors
and the exit, rain and all, draws ever nearer.

Outside the cars jump on me.
In fits and starts they stop and jump
forward with panicky movements; I try to cross the street
as quickly as a Pac-Man eats its dots
without being run over by the ghosts.

I reach the bridge, trying to leave the old city behind
get some fresh air over the sea,
but a forest of fishing rods blocks my path
their lines like great, lubricated macaronis
uniting concrete with water.
The tram whooshes behind me, the cars honk,
I bump into oncoming tourists,
umbrellas mushrooming over their heads
their cameras yelling at me with open mouths,
I reach the edge of the pavement,
the end of the bridge,
I know youʼre parked there, waiting
for me to renounce Stamboul once and for all
the muezzin starts his evening call.

The plastic smell of your carʼs interior
tells me Iʼm safe. Everything quietens down.
Only your wipers scraping rain now
off the windshield in tactical, hollow thuds,
only the radio mumbling dully in the background,
only the sliding of the car on the wet asphalt,
only the grayness of the day invading my face with lurking light.

 

The love song of Theodorus Eleftheriades and Leyla Öztürk

Your body, supple, shifts under my palms,
the blue, Aegean stretch contracts and
my great-grandmother scrambles off that boat
in reverse, and starts her rearward march
from Izmir towards Ankara, step by dragging, backwards step,
each breath a drop of sweat that’s lifted off the ground
and locks itself back on her clammy scalp.

When I touch you, a muezzin’s song rings golden
through the city, and my aunts and uncles
reach their cool, green porch.
One foot skips back over the threshold,
then another; the sound of chains being unlocked.
A dozen outstretched hands forget the smell of metal.

You kiss me and my great-grandfather draws in
his final breath and leaps, suddenly, into life.
The rope around his body comes loose
and then recoils against some soldier’s belt;
he scrambles forth, away from his tree-trunk, supported
by two soldiers, hugs his daughter tightly, as tears roll in his eyes
upwards; the blood evaporates from my grandmother’s apron.

The horses and the cars pull out from Akhisar,
sucking their dust in, as you lean into me,
placing your weight against me. We hear
the summer crickets burst into their sudden song.
Behind the partly drawn blinds, the fields
are bathed in rising heat; the water vaporizes,
creating mirage upon mirage of movement.
Someone lifts his hand onto his brow and,
peering far into the distance towards Ankara,
wonders in silence, what is this cloud of rising dust?

 

Fever Land

This is the land he got saddled with
this pitiful, twenty by twenty piece of rocky ground
– occasional patches of thistles;

the sheep just about manage to graze,
when the snakes and the turtles donʼt get in the way.
A solitary shadow dances in circles in the middle

winding grooves around the single olive tree.
He gazes at it through the blue shutters
and the silent oleander.

Cicadas incessantly saw their way through the day.
At night the heat collides with dreams
leaky as a colander.

He gets up with the sun, sleeps with the sun
curses the cocks going off in succession
every three hours,

all around, despite the weather.
The fever of the land is infectious.
At night his dreams sweat,

white sheep graze and bleat,
like soft rainclouds about to pop
into a empty colander,

a solitary shadow dances circles in the middle.
He gets up with the fever sun,
cocks going off around in succession,

curses the rocks through the blue shutters;
the silent oleander screams
and burns among the snakes and thistles.

 

Little Girl Red

At six oʼclock in the evening they came;
hairless kid soldiers
sporting their manliness on their shoulders
in the form of AK 47s.
I heard their laughter ringing through the village,
a pack of howling hyenas
among the huts;
and as they drew closer

I ran.
I ran as fast as my childʼs feet could carry me,
dried twigs snapping underneath my soles,
my lucky pendants jingling on my ankles,
a taste of iron in my bitter mouth.
The world rushed towards me
borderless and hazy, one big swirl
of dust; a sandy world.

But they knew where to look for me.
I heard their barks
and then their sturdy legs
covering the distance between us.
Then came their breaths upon my neck,
someoneʼs fingers in my hair
pulling sharply, his hand
inside my mouth and

I bit hard.
His screams deafened me. The blood
rushed on my tongue thick
and sweet and I knew then-
I tasted my future. Next thing-
I kissed the earth dry, my nostrils
filled with dust. My buttocks shone naked,
exposed to the sweet, spring evening.

They turned me over.
I saw the glint of the blade
and the whiteness of my cousinʼs teeth,
a crescent moon rising in the sky of his face
his stars shining bright with righteousness.
He ducked between my legs, knife in hand;
the wetness washed all over me,
lapped upon the soil under my thighs;
the world turned red

        like your lips, my love.
So donʼt be scared if you uncover
as you undress me, my missing core.
Donʼt turn away for you can cause
no further pain. Look without blinking,
taste my desire without haste
trace without hesitancy my scars.
Whatever tenderness there is
cannot be mutilated.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Krystalli Glyniadakis was born in Athens, in 1979. After a decade of studying philosophy in London, she finally found what she was looking for in poetry, in Norwich; she graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at the UEA, had her first Greek collection published in December 2009 under the title London- Istanbul by Polis Editions; it was shortlisted for the “Diavazo” literary award for first time authors. She is currently living between Istanbul and Athens.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Sunday, July 4th, 2010.