3 Poems: Yaprak Damla Yıldırım

six

i assembled my bones my bones are in place
as i kept crashing the corners of the dice
i mastered the right 

i rolled my organs around my back
taking each necessary part of me 
i set off on a journey

i fastened my body
to the endorsed spaces
(remember spaces are surely somebody’s
backyard
with clear-cut contours and requisite crimes)

i looked at my hands my hands are leaded and tinned
upon my soldered skin it keeps scraping
an ache of ear
a master of touch my hands are

the water where i dip my wrists
hits rust stains to the surface
straight ahead flowing without meandering 
and consecrating yellow like blood
to manifold 
itself and spaces and contours and the filth
for my hands again
for my body again
it becomes a bed

i looked at my pieces my pieces are in place
i humped my pieces along backyards
around each necessary part of me 
i scattered bone meals
i counted to six
and then to six again
1   2   3 4   5   6 
2
3
4
5
6

crime

wild sparrows for the electric poles
your featherless skeletons piling up at the footnotes
in your window-side books

fingers of everybody
did extend and blend with the wires 
of the poles stripped by their own murders

at each journey whose corner you fold
there remains the greasy stains of everybody
with high voltage

everybody is responsible for what you’ve done to yourselves

liberation

i burnt my father
to warm up my legs

for the legs
the splits 
of walking 
and lovemaking 

Words: Yaprak Damla Yıldırım

Published: October 2018

Yaprak Damla Yıldırım was born in Gaziantep, Turkey in 1994. She graduated from Boğaziçi University Management and Western Languages & Literatures department. Her essays, translations, book reviews, poems, and interviews have been published in journals such as Varlık, Evrensel Kültür, Yasakmeyve, and Yeni E. She was appointed as “Promising Young Poet” by Yasakmeyve. She is currently a graduate student of Critical and Cultural Studies program at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul.