nail
neither traces of sperm nor fear of the unborn child
on my lips the taste of a rotten apple
i’m not afraid of you anymore mirror
i’m looking at life through a bold, red window
we’re sharing a murder, timid
we cut open the darkness scrapped from it
we multiply in a tight space
we fall into a vast love
red sandals now walk through us
never having been anchored
the evening builds and falls
your words
cum in my mouth
while we commit common crimes
in musty rooms
crime is good!
let it flow through a dirty hole
and coagulate under fingernails—an old
mirror! the death inside me grows larger and larger
your love’s like a rusty nail
drawing my face.
heart
when i wake up everything will end
and love becomes useless;
i’ll leave
a thick coal odor in the air,
food crumbs left on a table
and silence being poured . . .
i’ll not quench the coarse night
burning every poem
without leaving a strand of hair behind me
yes, soiling the words, wearing them out
as i head to a place i’ve never seen
i will remain a child, and treachery will end
when the grand GMEP dies
i’ll pierce your groin with a needle
and enter the blood flowing in your veins
so my pump can drain your dirty blood
i can shut up now
right at this point
in the middle
(through this open door
i can enter myself)
come on choose me
life!
let me lean on your chest
if you can’t do this
just lick me
passing right by my . . .
roses cut on an angle . . .
their victory
Two Poems
Deniz Durukan
translated from the Turkish by Jeffrey Kahrs and Mete Özel
Listen to a recording of:
Though Turkish may, at first, seem simple or plain to an English-language reader used to looking for a clear, specific meaning in a word, the context of Turkish within a sentence, a paragraph, or the entire work defines a word in ways that are simply not possible in English. English pushes forward like a train, each word hitched in a linear fashion and defined as specifically as possible. Since Turkish is a suffix-based language, it also has been compared to a train, with the root as the locomotive pulling the numerous suffixes behind it. But this is only at first glance. Turkish poetry, because of its inflected syntax, is in fact more like a tree, consuming words and images so they may grow together on limbs extending outward from the trunk. The leaves are just an outer manifestation of the core. The famous example is “the man killed the tiger,” which can be said in six syntactically different ways in Turkish. This flexibility lends Turkish poets and translators the ability to choose from a wealth of sounds and syntactical relationships.
By contrast, English is a vocabulary-rich language, with many options at the word level. We therefore spent a good deal of time debating the right words for these poems.
The poets we translate are participants in our modern/post-modern age. Not only do they seek to change traditional poetic patterns and conventional rhyming but they also bring the use of daily language to their work and seek to “break” the language grammatically. What we mean is they push Turkish to the edge, disrupting meaning in the process of searching for their voice and the voice of their times. The multiplicity that arises out of the breaking of meaning enriches the possibilities in their voices. It is a search for a language in which distinct, heterogenous, and sometimes prophetic voices can be heard, a rallying cry against the patriarchy and sedate bureaucracy that mimics the language of the state.
By contrast, English is a vocabulary-rich language, with many options at the word level. We therefore spent a good deal of time debating the right words for these poems.
The poets we translate are participants in our modern/post-modern age. Not only do they seek to change traditional poetic patterns and conventional rhyming but they also bring the use of daily language to their work and seek to “break” the language grammatically. What we mean is they push Turkish to the edge, disrupting meaning in the process of searching for their voice and the voice of their times. The multiplicity that arises out of the breaking of meaning enriches the possibilities in their voices. It is a search for a language in which distinct, heterogenous, and sometimes prophetic voices can be heard, a rallying cry against the patriarchy and sedate bureaucracy that mimics the language of the state.
Deniz Durukan has published poetry as well as essays on literature and music in a variety of journals and newspapers. She was the editor-in-chief of the culture and art magazine Pulbiber from 2015 to 2016. She also prepared the collective book From Fahriye Abla to Çanakkaleli Melahat (The Image of Women in Modern Turkish Poetry; Everest, İstanbul, 2011) for publication. Her other books are Türk Rock 2000 (Turkish Rock 2000; Stüdyo İmge, Istanbul, 2001), Türk Rock 2001 (Turkish Rock 2001; Stüdyo İmge, Beyoğlu, İstanbul, 2002), İyiler Siyak Giyer (The Good Wear Black; Everest, Istanbul, 2004), Şakağına Day Beni (Stick me on Your Joke, 2005), Rugan (Patent Leather, 2009), Dokuz Katlı Sıdıka (Nine-Story Sıdıka; Mylos Kitap, 2016), and Usulca Vedat Sakman (Quietly the Musician: Vedat Sakman; hep kitap, İstanbul, 2019). Her poetry collection, Yakın Temas (Close Contact; Kırmızı Kedi), was published in 2022.
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 in 2012, he coedited 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 has appeared in Talisman, Sky Island Journal, What Rough Beast, Subtropics, and other journals. He has also published fiction and nonfiction in the Bosphorus Review of Books, Heavy Feather Review, PN Review, Tikkun, and Virüs, and he has cotranslated a variety of notable Turkish poets with Mete Özel. Their translations have been accepted for publication in Circumference, Asymptote, and Northwest Review. Kahrs has lived in Istanbul for eighteen years.
Mete Özel is currently working as a researcher and storyteller on Anatolian oral traditions in collaboration with the San Francisco-based Artship and the Halka Art Project in Istanbul. His first book, Ilgım Düş Esrar, was published in 2008 by Yasakmeyve. In addition to having poems published in numerous well-known Turkish journals, such as Varlık, Yasakmeyve, and Virüs, he is an accomplished critic, having published essays about Elitis, Pavese, Cavalcanti, and Goethe. Özel has translated a number of poets including Metin Altiok, Carlos Felipe Moisés, Artem Harutyunyan, Rutger Kopland, Michele Zaffarano, Miron Bialoszevski, Yip Fai, Yelena Şvarts, Donnie Smith, and Elena Liliana Popescu.
