laytkültür
by fajr i have grown a long beard. if you like,
break the challah on the grey of my hair. i’ll take the gift,
the last stretch over dried-up cups under calloused feet.
what can i say, at the margins the tongue clicks louder.
believe me, we’ve waited long enough. the hummus
must be shared. jump in headfirst, until you can’t tell,
is it her finger, is it his finger. and to whom does the
salty dream in the sesame puddle belong. my fathermother says
whoever eats alone commits a sin. she is right.
together it’s easier to forge plans. together it’s easier to sit
cheekily on the minaret. sunset over kreuzberg
and the shabbat candles glow from one cuma to the next.
what can i say, at the margins the tongue clicks louder.
time to rewrite the guest list. believe me, we’ve waited
long enough. with maghrib, the day really begins.
table and chairs are reserved, the bill—
footed by the occident.
like wine for hafiz
your name has lost its way, wanders over arms.
spine. and legs too. if i had to describe you:
like wine, like a slender cypress for hafiz.
and cheeks like moonlight.
your lips keçi boynuzu,
sun-ripened badinjan, pistachio ice cream
in the mahalle. and your glances like
warm sand burrow deep into pores,
grate armpits. knees. and toes too. just before isha
dipping my head under hot water,
closing my eyes and murmuring, incessantly
murmuring your name, pulling the plug
at some point, spinning and spinning and
spinning, and maybe disappearing.
from prinzenbad
Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç
translated from the German by Özgecan Kesici
Listen to a recording of "laytkültür" read in the original German by the poet:
The two poems are from Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç’s debut collection, Prinzenbad, named after his eponymous poem and a public outdoor swimming pool located in Kreuzberg, Berlin. The swimming pool is regularly staged as a threatening place by the media, as it is visited by migrant and Muslim youths. Keskinkılıç, in his poem, stages it as the scene of queer desire and love.
Just as Keskinkılıç subverts the scene set by the media, he twists his plurilingualism into neologisms that a monolingual reader might not grasp on first reading. The title laytkültür, for instance, is a humorous neologism that playfully undermines the German term used by politicians and the media: Leitkultur. While Leitkultur is used to fuel homogeneity fantasies and racist tropes, the poet claims it by creating a neologism that stamps it with the Turkish language.
We see Keskinkılıç's linguistic world in his German-language poetry when he uses Turkish, Arabic and English phrases, sometimes within a single poem. Keskinkılıç is unapologetically his own centre and refuses to be placed in the margins, and that is what has made the translations of these poems so delectable for me as a translator.
These translations were made possible with the support of the German Translation Fund (Deutscher Übersetzerfonds).
Just as Keskinkılıç subverts the scene set by the media, he twists his plurilingualism into neologisms that a monolingual reader might not grasp on first reading. The title laytkültür, for instance, is a humorous neologism that playfully undermines the German term used by politicians and the media: Leitkultur. While Leitkultur is used to fuel homogeneity fantasies and racist tropes, the poet claims it by creating a neologism that stamps it with the Turkish language.
We see Keskinkılıç's linguistic world in his German-language poetry when he uses Turkish, Arabic and English phrases, sometimes within a single poem. Keskinkılıç is unapologetically his own centre and refuses to be placed in the margins, and that is what has made the translations of these poems so delectable for me as a translator.
These translations were made possible with the support of the German Translation Fund (Deutscher Übersetzerfonds).
Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç is a political scientist and author based in Berlin. His widely acclaimed book Muslimaniac: Die Karriere eines Feindbildes (Muslimaniac: The Career of an Enemy Image) was recently published in a revised new edition by Verbrecher Verlag (2023). In addition to academic texts, Keskinkılıç writes prose, radio pieces and poetry. His poems have been published in newspapers and various literary journals, magazines and anthologies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and translated into English, French, Italian and Kazakh. In August 2022 his debut collection, Prinzenbad, was published by Elif Verlag; the third edition is now available. Keskinkılıç has been nominated for the Clemens-Brentano-Preis and the Dresden Poetry Prize. He is currently working on his debut novel.
Özgecan Kesici is a writer and translator whose short stories and poems have appeared in stadtsprachen, Banshee Press and Poetry Ireland Review, among others. She translated Rakhymzhan Otarbayev’s Kazakh short stories (Dağyeli Verlag, 2022) and received a German Translation Fund Initiative Scholarship to translate Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç’s debut poetry collection, prinzenbad (Elif Verlag, 2022). She holds a PhD in sociology from University College Dublin.
